In July, Florida Republicans launched the brutal “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration detention center deep in the Florida Everglades with great fanfare. Soon, the Trump administration was championing it as a model it wanted to replicate across the country. But less than two months later, the camp is being dismantled and emptied of detainees.
The Department of Homeland Security says it is moving detainees out of the facility in compliance with a district judge’s order after ruling that it violated federal environmental law. The dissolution of the tauntingly named detention center is a blow to Republican efforts to supercharge the Trump administration’s dehumanizing mass deportation program. And it’s a sign of how the GOP hits walls when it prioritizes spectacle over practicality.
It’s a setback to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' agenda to serve as the tip of the spear of Trump's mass deportation regime.
The idea behind “Alligator Alcatraz” was that it would be so deeply isolated in the Everglades that it would be impossible to escape and such an awful place to be detained that it would encourage undocumented immigrants to self-deport. The compound was set up in just eight days and is surrounded by 39 square miles of swampland teeming with alligators and pythons. According to The Hill, detainees have complained about “maggot-filled food, flooding floors, insects everywhere, and poorly functioning air conditioning.” A former employee at the detention center described the cages people were kept in as “an oversized kennel.”
At least three lawsuits challenged the existence of the Everglades detention center. One lawsuit, brought by environmentalists and the Miccosukee Tribe, argued that the construction of the center violated federal law because it proceeded rapidly without public input or an environmental impact assessment. Another lawsuit brought by civil rights groups argued that detainees’ constitutional rights were being violated because they were being held without charges and were denied access to legal counsel. (A third lawsuit from a civil rights group claimed that there were problems surrounding the opaque conditions under which the detainees were being held that were “previously unheard-of in the immigration system.”)
The environmentalists’ lawsuit was effective. On Aug. 21, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams issued a preliminary injunction blocking further expansion of the detention center and effectively called for it to be dismantled within 60 days. Williams said she was upholding legislation designed to protect the Everglades, as my colleague Jordan Rubin explained:
Williams wrote in her preliminary injunction ruling that, for example, the Florida panther ‘has lost 2,000 acres of habitat as a result of the facility’s construction and use of intense lights disturbing the habitats of these nocturnal creatures,’ and that ‘several witnesses testified about how the facility’s light pollution has adversely affected their ability to observe the night sky.’
Florida officials are appealing the ruling. But in the meantime, the facility is winding down. Gulf Coast News reports that trucks are transporting equipment and supplies out of the detention center and that vans and buses leaving the facility “appeared to be transporting detainees.”
This isn’t a civil rights win against what was happening at “Alligator Alcatraz” — it’s an argument that the way the thing was built was reckless and hazardous for the environment. Nonetheless, it’s a setback to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ agenda to serve as the tip of the spear of Trump’s mass deportation regime using far-fetched schemes designed to attract attention. It also looks like an awful waste of time and money — The Associated Press estimates Florida “could be on the hook for $218 million” for the construction of the facilities.
Of course, the main cost exacted by “Alligator Alcatraz” has been on the migrants who have been detained there in conditions that robbed them of their dignity and rights and imperiled their health. Sick stunts like “Alligator Alcatraz” also cause a moral injury to the country as a whole by normalizing the idea that it’s acceptable to treat human beings as props in a stunt meant to degrade and deter.
Like the old Alcatraz prison, “Alligator Alcatraz” is heavy on the spectacle of domination and light on practicality. (Trump wants to reopen and expand the old one, it should be noted, after it was shut down in the mid-20th century because it was so expensive and difficult to maintain.) What these facilities do is tell a story about how people in power believe certain categories of people deserve to be treated with a special kind of cruelty. It’s frustrating that the lawsuit arguing that people don’t deserve such treatment wasn’t the one that got them out. But in this case, a lawsuit focusing on environmental protection had the same effect.
