Hundreds of environmentalists, indigenous and activists protested this Saturday against the future immigration jail ‘Aligator Alcatraz’ (Alcatraz Caimán), which could be opened on Tuesday, according to the governor of FloridaRon Desantis, to retain up to 3,000 migrants.
The protesters congregated, between the passage of construction trucks, in the Everglades Natural Park to denounce the environmental effects in this area of wetlands and swamps to the west of Miami, where there are 36 native species of animals and plants threatened or in danger.
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“This scam will cost us 450 million dollars and ruin our precious Everglades”; “Continue with the ‘Aligator Alcatraz’ is criminal”, “these are concentration camps in indigenous lands,” said some of their posters.
The protests rerecaged after a tour of the area that broadcast the ‘Fox and Friends’ program the previous night with Desantis, who suggested that the detention center, built in an abandoned airport, could begin to receive immigrants from Tuesday.
The activists denounced the “inhuman” conditions that this would imply for migrants, who would be exposed to the “extreme” heat of summer in Florida, to hurricanes and animals such as caimanes and snakes.
“We have to advocate all of us,” said one of the protest leaders, Betty Osceola, indigenous of the Mikasuki people, who lives the place. “Look for in your heart to pray for all these detained people so that they can be human again.”
A caiman in an artificial channel near drought wetland plants in Everglades National Park, in Pembroke Pines, Florida, on May 17, 2025. (Photo by Chandan Khanna / AFP)
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The speed of the construction of the ‘Aligator Alcatraz’ impacts the environmentalists, because just on June 18 the Attorney General of Florida, James Uthmeier, offered the customs immigration and control service (ICE) retain there from next month to 1,000 migrants, initial figure.
Therefore, Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit to stop the center by arguing that the decision “was taken without performing any environmental evaluation, as required by the National Environmental Policy Law.”
The United States ICE announced the arrest of 84 migrants, including two Mexican “criminals”, in an operation in a Hippodrome in Louisiana as part of the raids in work sites. (EFE/ICE)
The place, whose name refers to the Caimanes de Florida and the historic prison of Alcatraz that the president, Donald Trump, has ordered to reopen in the San Francisco Bay, is built in an area of just over 100 square kilometers.
The governor has argued that the State lives an “emergency” to build ‘Aligator Alcatraz’ and another immigration detention center announced Wednesday in a National Guard field to the Suorete de Jacksonville, with which Florida will house up to 5,000 migrants in total.
