A Florida Local American chief spoke out towards a brand new migrant detention facility within the Florida Everglades, nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz,” elevating environmental and protection issues for native tribal communities.
President Trump, visiting the website Tuesday, stated the power will cling “one of the crucial maximum menacing migrants, one of the crucial maximum vicious other people in the world.”
The detention heart, constructed on a far off airstrip within the Everglades, can cling as much as 5,000 migrants in tents and trailers.
A drone view displays the development website of the state’s drawing close “Alligator Alcatraz” ICE detention heart at Dade-Collier Coaching and Transition Airport in Ochopee, Florida, June 28, 2025.
AP
Talbert Cypress, chairman of the Miccosukee Trade Council, stated some tribal villages are situated inside of 900 ft of the power’s front.
“This proposed facility is surrounded on either side by way of the Large Cypress Nationwide Keep, and the tribe has been at house within the Large Cypress for hundreds of years,” Cypress informed ABC Information.
Cypress pointed to the loss of environmental research on what developing the detention heart may imply for the native ecosystem.
“There may be been no environmental have an effect on find out about accomplished. The environmental have an effect on find out about that used to be accomplished again in 1974 just about urged that placing any roughly airship within the house used to be going to have important affects at the Everglades,” he stated.
Demonstrators cling indicators as they protest President President Donald Trump’s consult with to a migrant detention heart, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” situated on the website of the Dade-Collier Coaching and Transition Airport in Ochopee, Florida, July 1, 2025.
Giorgio Viera/AFP by way of Getty Photographs
The power’s closeness to standard Local camps, the place Miccosukee and Seminole individuals reside and educate each American and Local schooling, has raised extra issues.
“We are all for protection… CBP, additionally simply normally, all of the visitors that is going to be coming thru there, and flights coming out and in,” Cypress stated.
Throughout the excursion with Division of Place of birth Safety Secretary Kristi Noem and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Trump highlighted the power’s far off location.
Beds are observed inside of a migrant detention heart, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” situated on the website of the Dade-Collier Coaching and Transition Airport in Ochopee, Fla., July 1, 2025.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP by way of Getty Photographs
“It is very suitable, as a result of I appeared outdoor and it isn’t a spot I need to cross climbing anytime quickly,” Trump stated. “We are surrounded by way of miles of treacherous swamp land, and the one method out is in reality deportation.”
ABC Information correspondent Victor Oquendo reported that the management sees the encompassing natural world, together with alligators and pythons, as a herbal barrier for the detention heart, preventing migrants from having the ability to get away.
The power would possibly turn into a type for identical facilities deliberate in Louisiana and Alabama, Trump informed ABC Information.
New knowledge studied by way of ABC Information displays a shift in enforcement priorities, with extra arrests of migrants and not using a prison document. DHS spoke back that 70% of ICE arrests have been migrants with a prison document.
Cypress ended with a message to Trump and DeSantis: “President Trump and DeSantis had been superb to the Everglades, and we really feel like [this is a] step backwards of their effort.”
