EVERGLADES, Florida — President Donald Trump celebrated the speedy construction of “Alligator Alcatraz,” a new immigrant detention facility in the heart of the Florida Everglades, and warned that the only way for detainees to get out of this “treacherous” region is through deportation.
“It’s known as Alligator Alcatraz, which is very appropriate, because I look outside and it’s not a place I want to go,” Trump said during a visit to the site in Ochopee, Florida, on Tuesday afternoon. “We’re surrounded by miles of treacherous swamp land, and the only way out is really deportation.”
Trump arrived in south Florida late Tuesday morning and led a roundtable discussion in the facility’s air-conditioned dining hall, a space large enough to hold 1,000 illegal immigrants in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. The facility will receive its first detainees later on Tuesday.
Before sitting down with local, state, and federal officials, Trump toured the expansive site and had a friendly meeting with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), his former foe in the 2024 GOP presidential primary. Trump told DeSantis the state had done a “fantastic job” constructing the buildings in just over a week.
“We got the call from [the Department of Homeland Security] a little bit more than a week ago, and here we are eight days later, with this facility open,” DeSantis said. “As soon as Air Force One departs, it’ll be swept and it’ll be open for business. … But our goal here is to process them and be able to effectuate their return to their home country.”
Trump touted that “very soon, this facility will house some of the most menacing migrants, some of the most vicious people on the planet.”
Trump saw neatly made-up bunk beds in residential spaces and a medical facility on site before heading into a large white tent where several dozen law enforcement and media waited to hear from him.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL), and other state and local leaders outlined how the state made the unprecedented move to partner with the federal government to erect a soft-sided detention facility that would provide ICE with more space to detain illegal immigrants.
“This facility here is a fantastic representation of what can happen when all of government works together and when it’s accountable to the taxpayers, and to the citizens who live here,” Noem said.
ICE Director Todd Lyons and Border Patrol Miami Sector Chief Samuel Briggs II were also in attendance.
Trump said Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) could take a lesson from “Alligator Alcatraz.”
“The first thing you should do is come here and learn something. Because they don’t do this, they wouldn’t know where to begin. And if they did it, it would cost them 100 times more. So I would say you should call the governor [DeSantis] and Kristi [Noem],” Trump said.
Who will operate the facility?
“Alligator Alcatraz” is jointly run by the state and ICE, and it will contain a maximum of 3,000 detainees and 1,000 staff members, including 400 security personnel.
Where Trump will sit as he leads a round table at Alligator Alcatraz this morning.@FLSERT built the ICE detention site in 8 days.
3,000 detainees.
1,000 staff.
10 miles of Everglades in all directions.
20,000 ft of barbed wire. pic.twitter.com/g22N119QgE— Anna Giaritelli (@Anna_Giaritelli) July 1, 2025
The site stretches across multiple tents, including massive bunk bed rooms, a sweeping dining hall with stone-like flooring, a recreation tent outside, access to medical care and clergy, and laundry facilities.
It contains 158,000 square feet of space, and the tents are held up with aluminum posts.
Just a day earlier, dozens of dump trucks went in and out of the airport grounds in Ochopee in a last-minute rush to complete the tent structures and infrastructure for the new ICE detention site before Trump’s arrival.
Location, location, location
More than 10 miles of Everglades swampland surrounds the massive site, as well as 28,000 feet of barbed wire and 200 security cameras.
Florida National Guard members and the Secret Service man the gated entrance off Tamiami Trail, a one-lane road linking Miami to the Gulf Coast city of Naples.
“Alligator Alcatraz” will serve as a supplemental ICE detention facility in addition to the one on the edge of the Everglades, known as the Krome Detention Center, which has been under the public microscope for rampant abuse against detainees.
Why the name ‘Alligator Alcatraz’?
The mostly unused airport grounds sit in the middle of the Everglades, a natural region of flooded grasslands that stretches across 2 million acres in south Florida.
The area contains an estimated 200,000 wild alligators and countless pythons. The Washington Examiner saw alligators across the region while driving to and from the airport.
Best advice is to always assume gators are lurking, especially in swampy terrain… https://t.co/822ZXTZuLQ
— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) July 1, 2025
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt touted during a Monday press conference that the site’s remoteness was a security feature that would deter immigrants detained inside from attempting to escape from federal custody.
“There’s only one road leading in, and there is the only way out,” Leavitt said. “It is isolated and surrounded by dangerous wildlife in unforgiving terrain. The facility will have up to 5,000 beds to house, process, and deport criminal illegal aliens.”
Attorney General James Uthmeier (R-FL) proposed the project earlier in June and said the tent facility would not require much of a barrier because if immigrants escape, “there’s not much waiting for them, other than alligators and pythons.”
How ICE will use the site
DeSantis took executive action in late June to erect the soft-sided facility at the mostly unused airport strip. DeSantis said the proximity of the multipurpose airport to the detention center creates a “logistically simple” way to increase ICE deportations because the migrants can easily fly in and out.
DeSantis estimated the state had 50,000 illegal immigrant residents who were ordered by a federal immigration judge to be deported, but had not left the country.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, previewed Trump’s visit, highlighting how some of the “worst of the worst criminal aliens” have already been arrested in Florida as part of the Trump administration’s plan to go after and deport criminal illegal immigrants.
“Alligator Alcatraz, and other facilities like it, will give us the capability to lock up some of the worst scumbags who entered our country under the previous administration,” Noem said in an earlier statement.
Pushback from the community
Several dozen activists and protesters who oppose “Alligator Alcatraz” gathered along the road over the weekend, holding signs that called for the project’s end and warned it would negatively affect the environment.
David Jolly, a former Republican congressman who is running as a Democrat in the Florida gubernatorial race, called “Alligator Alcatraz” a “callous political stunt” that overlooks the state’s housing affordability crisis.
“As Governor, I will rescind the current Governor’s emergency order, return control of the airfield to Miami-Dade County, protect the Everglades, and the ancestral Miccoukee lands, and ensure that those whose only offense is pursuing the American dream on behalf of their family and kids can continue contributing to Florida’s culture and economy,” Jolly said in a statement.
FLORIDA CREWS RUSH TO FINISH ICE’S ‘ALLIGATOR ALCATRAZ’ AHEAD OF TRUMP ARRIVAL
Donalds, who is also running for governor, told the Washington Examiner in an interview at the site on Tuesday that the Republican Party was focused on carrying out Trump’s larger deportation operation to restore law and order to the United States by deporting people who have no reason to be living in the country.
“I don’t listen to what a lot of naysayers say,” Donalds said. “These are actually quality facilities, but at the end of the day, it’s about the mission. We were given a mandate by the American people. It was to stop the craziness of Joe Biden, to send people back to their home countries, not with malice. But this is actually the humanitarian thing to do because the worst thing to do is have people living in the shadows in the United States with really no true economic hope.”
