{"id":36187,"date":"2025-07-03T20:16:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-03T20:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/36187\/"},"modified":"2025-07-03T20:16:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T20:16:13","slug":"first-immigration-detainees-arrive-at-florida-center-in-the-everglades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/36187\/","title":{"rendered":"First immigration detainees arrive at Florida center in the Everglades"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

AP Mobile App CTA<\/p>\n

\"AP<\/p>\n

Get the AP News App<\/p>\n


\n \"Download
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

The first group of immigrants has arrived at a new detention center<\/a> deep in the Florida Everglades that officials have dubbed \u201cAlligator Alcatraz,\u201d a spokesperson for Republican state Attorney General James Uthmeier told The Associated Press. <\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are there,\u201d Press Secretary Jae Williams said, though he didn\u2019t immediately provide further details on the number of detainees or when they arrived. <\/p>\n

\u201cNext stop: back to where they came from,\u201d Uthmeier said on the X social media platform Wednesday. He\u2019s been credited as the architect behind the Everglades proposal.<\/p>\n

\u201cStood up in record time under @GovRonDeSantis<\/a> \u2019 leadership & in coordination with @DHSgov<\/a> & @ICEgov<\/a>, Florida is proud to help facilitate @realDonaldTrump<\/a> \u2019s mission to enforce immigration law,\u201d the account for the Florida Division of Emergency Management posted to the social media site X on Thursday. Requests for additional information from the office of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and FDEM, which is building the site, were not returned early Thursday afternoon.<\/p>\n

The facility,<\/a> at an airport used for training, will have an initial capacity of about 3,000 detainees, DeSantis said. The center was built in eight days and features more than 200 security cameras, 28,000-plus feet (8,500 meters) of barbed wire and 400 security personnel.<\/p>\n

Immigrants who are arrested by Florida law enforcement officers under the federal government\u2019s 287(g) program will be taken to the facility, according to an official in President Donald Trump\u2019s administration. The program is led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement<\/a> and allows police officers to interrogate immigrants in their custody and detain them for potential deportation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The facility is expected to be expanded in 500 bed increments until it has an estimated 5,000 beds by early July.<\/p>\n

A group of Florida Democratic state lawmakers headed to the facility Thursday to conduct \u201can official legislative site visit,\u201d citing concerns about conditions for detainees and the awarding of millions of dollars in state contracts for the construction.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs lawmakers, we have both the legal right and moral responsibility to inspect this site, demand answers, and expose this abuse before it becomes the national blueprint,\u201d the legislators said in a joint statement ahead of the visit. <\/p>\n

Federal agencies signaled their opposition Thursday to a lawsuit brought by environmental groups seeking to halt operations at the detention center. Though Trump applauded the center during an official tour earlier this week, the filing on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security seemed to try to distance his administration from the facility, and said no federal money to date has been spent on it. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A Sysco truck arrives at the \u201cAlligator Alcatraz,\u201d a new migrant detention facility at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition facility, Wednesday, July 2, 2025, in Ochopee, Fla. (AP Photo\/Marta Lavandier)<\/p>\n

A Sysco truck arrives at the \u201cAlligator Alcatraz,\u201d a new migrant detention facility at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition facility, Wednesday, July 2, 2025, in Ochopee, Fla. (AP Photo\/Marta Lavandier)<\/p>\n

Read More<\/p>\n

\u201cDHS has not implemented, authorized, directed, or funded Florida\u2019s temporary detention center. Florida is constructing and operating the facility using state funds on state lands under state emergency authority and a preexisting general delegation of federal authority to implement immigration functions,\u201d the U.S. filing says.<\/p>\n

Human rights advocates and Native American tribes have also protested against the center,<\/a> contending it is a threat to the fragile Everglades system, would be cruel to detainees because of heat and mosquitoes, and is on land the tribes consider sacred.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also located at a place prone to frequent heavy rains, which caused some flooding in the tents Tuesday during a visit by President Donald Trump to mark its opening. State officials say the complex can withstand a Category 2 hurricane, which packs winds of between 96 and 110 mph (154 and 177 kph), and that contractors worked overnight to shore up areas where flooding occurred.<\/p>\n

According to images shared with the AP, overnight Wednesday, workers put up new signs labeled \u201cAlligator Alcatraz\u201d along the sole highway leading to the site and outside the entrance of the airfield that has been known as the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport. State officials seized the county-owned land where the facility is located using emergency powers authorized by an executive order issued by the governor.<\/p>\n

DeSantis and other state officials say locating the facility in the rugged and remote Florida Everglades is meant as a deterrent \u2014 and naming it after the notorious federal prison<\/a> of Alcatraz, an island fortress known for its brutal conditions, is meant to send a message. It\u2019s another sign of how the Trump administration and its allies are relying on scare tactics<\/a> to try to persuade people in the country illegally to leave voluntarily.<\/p>\n

State and federal officials have touted the plans on social media and conservative airwaves, sharing a meme of a compound ringed with barbed wire and \u201cguarded\u201d by alligators wearing hats labeled \u201cICE\u201d for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The Republican Party of Florida has taken to fundraising off the detention center, selling branded T-shirts and beer koozies emblazoned with the facility\u2019s name.<\/p>\n

_____<\/p>\n

Anderson reported from St. Petersburg, Florida. Payne reported from Tallahassee, Florida. Associated Press reporters Gisela Salomon in Miami contributed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AP Mobile App CTA Get the AP News App The first group of immigrants has arrived at a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":36188,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[20865,3425,69,6064,723,29605,57,29606,409,14521,2936,80,2938,14516,159,3676,61,67,132,68,837],"class_list":{"0":"post-36187","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-alligators-and-crocodiles","9":"tag-animals","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-fl-state-wire","12":"tag-florida","13":"tag-florida-state-government","14":"tag-general-news","15":"tag-hurricanes-and-typhoons","16":"tag-immigration","17":"tag-james-uthmeier","18":"tag-law-enforcement","19":"tag-politics","20":"tag-prisons","21":"tag-ron-desantis","22":"tag-science","23":"tag-u-s-department-of-homeland-security","24":"tag-u-s-news","25":"tag-united-states","26":"tag-unitedstates","27":"tag-us","28":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114791146157641249","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}