Trump, DeSantis, Noem tour 'Alligator Alcatraz'
By: Amy Bennett Williams
Fort Myers News-Press
USA Today Network - Florida
..... Shielded from passionate picketers and a media feeding frenzy, President Donald Trump with a had-picked posse of politicos toured a detention center in the Florida Everglades known as "Alligator Alcatraz" and found it good.
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Built in just eight days, according to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the controversial migrant detention facility has been a source of both fierce pride and equally fierce protests. The new facility sits atop an old one: the scuttled Everglades Jetport, now a early used training air strip.
..... As he chatted July 1 [2025] with DeSantis and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Krisi Noem, the president wondered if it could be replicated throughout the nation. Trump mused that it could be a prototype for more such camps, though, "you don't always have land so beautiful and so secure (with) log of bodyguards and a lot of cops in the form of alligators that you don't have to pay them so much."
..... Trump saws joined by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier and Representative Byron Donalds, R-Florida, for a round-table discussion about illegal immigration.
..... During the tour, Trump claimed former President Joe Biden wanted him behind similar bars.
..... "Biden wanted me in here, OK," trump said next to chain-link cages with beds that will house detained migrants beginning July 2. [2025] "He wanted me. Didn't work out that way, but he wanted me in here that son of a (expletive)."
..... Trump has repeatedly blamed Biden for his 2023 federal indictments led by Special Counsel Jack Smith over Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election and concealing classified documents.
..... Trump claimed the indictments were politically motivated to hurt his chances in the 2024 election. Both cases were closed after Trump was elected to a second presidential term in 2024.
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Banded with 28,000 feet of barbed wire, the tent city-type facility boasts 200 security cameras and will be staffed by 1,000 workers and guarded by 400 more. It is estimated to cost $450 million annually and can house some 5,000 people. According to a sign in one of the tents, the facility has "24/7 A/C." It also offers on-site resources including legal resources, access to clergy, a rec yard and laundry.
..... the facility sits in an area inhabited by alligators, crocodiles and pythons, images the White house has seized on to reinforce Trump's hard-line policy against illegal immigration.
..... "This is not a nice business," Trump told reporters in Washington before departing to Florida.
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"Snakes are fast, but alligators, we're going to teach them how to run away form an alligator," he said, waving his hand in a back and forth motion. "Don't run in a straight line. Run like this."
..... Outside the facility, protesters co continued a multi-day vigil against the facility, which was carved from the big Cypress national Preserve and includes lands held sacred by the indigenous people of the Everglades. A coalition of environmental nonprofits has challenged the project in a lawsuit field in June. [2025]