A number of groups protested against the construction of an immigrant detention center in Florida being called “Alligator Alcatraz” over the weekend of Saturday, June 28. It’s being called that because the site includes an abandoned 10,500-foot runway that’s surrounded by swampland filled with alligators and pythons.
The Associated Press reported that hundreds of protestors, among them environmental activists and Native Americans fighting for their homelands, were outside an airstrip in the Florida Everglades. Construction started on the detention center earlier in June.
The Miami Herald wrote that Attorney General James Uthmeier and Gov. Ron DeSantis expedited the center’s construction, and officials said supply trucks have been arriving daily as they aim to have the facility operational within the next week. Protestors waved signs saying “Protect the sacred” and “Everglades Only,” or calling the immigration detention center “Crimes against humanity.”
Two environmental groups, Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity, sued federal and local officials over the facility on Friday, June 27. They said construction started without an environmental review or public input required.
“”The hasty transformation of the site into a mass detention facility, which includes the installation of housing units, construction of sanitation and food services systems, industrial high-intensity lighting infrastructure, diesel power generators, substantial fill material altering the natural terrain, and provision of transportation logistics (including apparent planned use of the runway to receive and deport detainees) poses clear environmental impacts,” the lawsuit, obtained by WTVT, stated.
Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin responded to Fox News Digital by calling the lawsuit “lazy.”
“It ignores the fact that this land has already been developed for a decade,” McLaughlin said.
DeSantis has characterized the immigration detention center as “temporary,” saying “we’ll set it up and we’ll break it down,” according to WTVT.
Still, Miccosukee tribe member Betty Osceola, in remarks to reporters, said the speed of the construction at the center concerned her, and warned it could make it easier for permanent development on the land.
“This planet is for everyone, the water is for everyone, the air is for everyone, and we’re trying to educate about that,” Osceola was quoted by the Miami Herald as saying.
Uthmeier has said the plan is to make 5,000 beds in the immigration detention center operational by early July.