Florida opened its newly minted state-run immigrant detention camp deep in the Everglades, nicknamed "Alligator Alcatraz." President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis were on hand to inaugurate the facility on Tuesday in an apparent push to support the president's aggressive deportation campaign.
Located on an abandoned airstrip near Miami, the camp was built in eight days, DeSantis told reporters at the site, which will hold 1,000 detainees initially with plans to expand to 10,000, per local press reports.
"You have a lot of bodyguards and a lot of cops in the form of alligators. You don't have to pay them so much. I would not want to run through the Everglades for long,” Trump told reporters upon his arrival at the Everglades facility, which has only one road leading in and out of it.
DeSantis, clearing a politically damaging falling-out with Trump prior to the November election, sounded almost giddy. "Don't let Florida be the only state. We've got very red states that should be doing this," he said, suggesting that "a lot of people will self-deport on their own."
Trump agreed and chided Democratic states for not stepping up. "The blue states don't do very well at security and policing."
Meanwhile, the Everglades detention site is expected to cost $245 per bed per day, with Florida seeking potential reimbursement from FEMA, an agency Trump has sought to eliminate. Some contractors, however, have expressed concern that the budget was too low to meet federal detention standards and noted that no hurricane contingency plans were in place.
Private prison firms Geo Group Inc. (NYSE:GEO) and CoreCivic Inc. (NYSE:CXW), which currently dominate the federal immigration detention market, are not directly involved in the Everglades site at the moment, but may be tapped as the state expands its role.
Naturally, the move has sparked backlash from immigrant advocates and environmental groups. The latter say they're concerned about the impact of the facility on the Everglades’ fragile ecosystem. The 1.5 million acres of wetlands are home to a variety of endangered species, including the Florida panther, West Indian manatee and the American Crocodile. The Everglades are also an important water source for the region.
Nationwide, ICE has detained 56,397 immigrants as of June 15, 2025, far above the agency's funded capacity of 41,500, according to the Cato Institute.
Five of the ten people who have died in ICE custody this year were held in Florida, including a 75-year-old Cuban man who died last week at a Miami processing center.
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