In just eight days, an isolated training airport deep in the marshy wetlands of the Everglades became a makeshift detention center nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz,” and the latest battleground in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, reshaping South Florida’s reputation.
Nearly a month after its opening, the facility is still on the collective mind of the FIU community.
The last time Miami-Dade housed undocumented immigrants in a tent city was during the Mariel Boatlift of 1980, a six-month long mass exodus where Cubans and Haitians sought refuge from political unrest in their respective countries.
The sudden influx of Cubans and Haitians was the start of a new chapter for immigration in the United States and transformed Miami’s cultural identity by creating an enclave.
It was 45 years ago this summer, and now, undocumented immigrants in South Florida are met with a new crisis: mass deportation efforts–a promise that President Donald Trump seeks to keep.
On June 25, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier made a video statement announcing the plan to build a temporary migrant detention center at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport. Uthmeier said the site was ideal for a detention camp because it’s surrounded by swamplands and predatory wildlife that serve as a natural security perimeter.
Gov. Ron DeSantis moved at neck-breaking speed, seizing county land and relying on state emergency powers to build the immigration detention center in a week. Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem joined DeSantis and other state leaders for its opening on July 1.
The facility – which is composed of tents and trailers – has the capacity to house thousands of migrants. Inside, there are rows of bunk beds enclosed in fencing. With cameras, security personnel and 28,000 feet of barbed wire, security is tight.
Priya Deonarine, an 18-year-old freshman at Florida International University, was born and raised in Naples. She worries about what may be happening inside the camp.
“It’s almost like another Holocaust if you’re really thinking about it. You know, everything that was happening in Auschwitz, nobody talked about it, people who knew didn’t say anything” Deonarine, who plans to someday join student advocacy groups on campus, said. “Whatever’s happening to those people, we don’t know what’s happening.”
Detainees, their families and advocates condemn the alleged poor conditions inside the detention center, citing concerns about lack of food and medical treatment. Florida officials deny accusations of inhumane treatment, calling the reports “completely false.”
More than 250 people being held at Alligator Alcatraz are listed as having only immigration violations but no criminal record in the United States, according to records obtained by the Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times.
Alexander D. Barder, a Politics and International Relations professor at FIU, said in an email that there is a major problem with the facility.
“What is a cause for concern is that the adoption of the term Alcatraz to house undocumented immigrants is one way of framing them as public enemies deserving of being incarcerated in such a harsh facility. And while prisoners in the original Alcatraz were provided with due process, the prisoners who will populate the Alligator Alcatraz may wait years for their cases to be adjudicated,” he said. “The major cause of concern is precisely how such a facility can be a way of weakening legal restraints to state power.”
The detention facility is the latest effort by Florida to back Trump’s aggressive anti-immigration agenda. It’s already dramatically altering South Florida’s image, positioning the region at the frontline of the mass deportation campaign.
“I will speculate here and suggest that this is part of a larger political project by state officials to project an image of Florida as the vanguard of the MAGA movement and politics. This has been DeSantis’ political project since he assumed office in 2019,” Barder said. “But it also suggests that South Florida in particular is ground zero of a crackdown on undocumented immigration.”
