“Under President Trump’s leadership, we are working at turbo speed on cost-effective and innovative ways to deliver on the American people’s mandate for mass deportations of criminal illegal aliens,” Noem said in a statement.
“We will expand facilities and bed space in just days, thanks to our partnership with Florida.”
The facility is to be built on the site of the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, a public airport around 58km (36 miles) from Miami. It will cost about $450m (£332m) a year to run.
In a video posted on X, Florida’s Attorney General James Uthmeier called the airport a “virtually abandoned facility”.
He said the detention centre could be built in 30 to 60 days and hold an estimated 1,000 people.
He argued the location acted as a natural deterrent for escapees.
Uthmeier said in the video: “[If] people, get out, there’s not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons. Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.”
The mayor of Miami-Dade County, Daniela Levine Cava, a Democrat, criticised the plan, saying “the impacts to the Everglades ecosystem could be devastating”.
The Florida Everglades are a unique environmental region comprising marshes, prairies, forests, mangroves and estuaries. Uthmeier said the facility would not be located within Everglades National Park.