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President Donald Trump’s administration is facing fierce backlash over its support for a controversial immigration detention center proposed for Florida’s Everglades that critics have condemned as “cruel” and “downright sadistic and inhumane.”
The proposed facility — which Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” ― is slated for construction at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport.
Uthmeier sparked outrage after suggesting that migrants detained at the site would risk encountering alligators and pythons in surrounding wetlands if they attempted to escape.
“Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide,” he boasted in a video shared online.
The plan is an “absolute horror show,” wrote Nayna Gupta, policy director at the American Immigration Council, on BlueSky, also noting how people will be held in a facility “surrounded by alligators and snakes in dangerous heat with NO oversight.”
Others on social media called the plan “diabolical” and argued that, with the Trump administration, “cruelty is always the point.”
Alligator Alcatraz? Seriously? Using Florida’s Everglades—home to thousands of alligators—as a human detention center is not just cruel, it’s downright sadistic and inhumane. This is the Trump administration doubling down on cruelty, turning immigration enforcement into a…
— Charles Perreira (@CharlesPerreir7) June 19, 2025Uthmeier's "Alligator Alcatraz" proposal is a cruel, inhumane, and legally dubious scheme that weaponizes nature against vulnerable immigrants, reflecting a disturbing disregard for human rights and judicial oversight.
— Richard Angwin (@RichardAngwin) June 20, 202520 Years Of Free Journalism
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