A Florida Native American chief spoke out in opposition to a brand new migrant detention facility within the Florida Everglades, nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz,” elevating environmental and security considerations for native tribal communities.
President Trump, visiting the positioning Tuesday, stated the power will maintain “a few of the most menacing migrants, a few of the most vicious folks on the planet.”
The detention middle, constructed on a distant airstrip within the Everglades, can maintain as much as 5,000 migrants in tents and trailers.
A drone view reveals the development web site of the state’s forthcoming “Alligator Alcatraz” ICE detention middle at Dade-Collier Coaching and Transition Airport in Ochopee, Florida, June 28, 2025.
AP
Talbert Cypress, chairman of the Miccosukee Enterprise Council, stated some tribal villages are positioned inside 900 ft of the power’s entrance.
“This proposed facility is surrounded on all sides by the Massive Cypress Nationwide Protect, and the tribe has been at house within the Massive Cypress for hundreds of years,” Cypress instructed ABC Information.
Cypress pointed to the dearth of environmental research on what creating the detention middle may imply for the native ecosystem.
“There’s been no environmental impression examine accomplished. The environmental impression examine that was accomplished again in 1974 just about advised that placing any form of airship within the space was going to have important impacts on the Everglades,” he stated.
Demonstrators maintain indicators as they protest President President Donald Trump’s go to to a migrant detention middle, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” positioned on the web site of the Dade-Collier Coaching and Transition Airport in Ochopee, Florida, July 1, 2025.
Giorgio Viera/AFP by way of Getty Photos
The ability’s closeness to conventional Native camps, the place Miccosukee and Seminole members stay and educate each American and Native schooling, has raised extra considerations.
“We’re involved about security… CBP, additionally simply generally, all of the visitors that is going to be coming by there, and flights coming out and in,” Cypress stated.
In the course of the tour with Division of Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Trump highlighted the power’s distant location.
Beds are seen inside a migrant detention middle, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” positioned on the web site of the Dade-Collier Coaching and Transition Airport in Ochopee, Fla., July 1, 2025.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP by way of Getty Photos
“It is very applicable, as a result of I seemed outdoors and it is not a spot I wish to go climbing anytime quickly,” Trump stated. “We’re surrounded by miles of treacherous swamp land, and the one method out is admittedly deportation.”
ABC Information correspondent Victor Oquendo reported that the administration sees the encircling wildlife, together with alligators and pythons, as a pure barrier for the detention middle, stopping migrants from having the ability to escape.
The ability may turn out to be a mannequin for comparable facilities deliberate in Louisiana and Alabama, Trump instructed ABC Information.
New information studied by ABC Information reveals a shift in enforcement priorities, with extra arrests of migrants with no felony document. DHS responded that 70% of ICE arrests had been migrants with a felony document.
Cypress ended with a message to Trump and DeSantis: “President Trump and DeSantis have been superb to the Everglades, and we really feel like [this is a] step backwards of their effort.”
