Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem praised Florida's "Alligator Alcatraz" detention center during a Saturday press conference, noting that five other states are in "ongoing conversations" to develop similar facilities modeled after the site.
Why It Matters
A new Florida detention center, dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz," was quickly created on Everglades land and holds an estimated 1,000 beds currently, Noem said on Saturday. It has triggered concern from human rights advocates amid concerning reports of conditions, while widely praised by the Trump administration and many of the president's supporters.
The center is part of the Trump administration's effort to crackdown on illegal immigration. President Donald Trump has vowed to carry out the largest mass deportation in U.S. history, an initiative that has seen an intensification of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids across the country.
However, ICE is struggling with limited capacity and resources to fulfill its mission of millions of deportations. In addition to the $45 billion to expand ICE detention centers allocated in Trump's "big, beautiful" bill, the White House is trying other ways to increase capacity, from repurposing Guantanamo Bay to new detention center contracts issued for private companies GEO Group and CoreCivic.
What To Know
During a Saturday press conference, Noem applauded Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for his partnership with DHS in getting "Alligator Alcatraz" up and running.
"We've had several other states that are actually using Alligator Alcatraz as a model for how they can partner with us as well," Noem told reporters, adding that it's a state-run facility that is partnered with DHS.
The 39-square-mile site is located at the Miami-Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport. The site was chosen in part because it has an airstrip that could be used to fly in detainees. It was built in only eight days to address the federal government's need for more detention beds.
The facility will cost about $450 million per year to operate. While it is offering between 500 to 1,000 beds at first, DeSantis noted it will have the capacity of around 3,000 beds once fully operational.
The center has drawn backlash from immigration, environmental and Indigenous groups and is facing a lawsuit from the group Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity. Noem said on Saturday that it is "held to the same standard that all federal facilities are."
Noem specifically noted, "I'm having ongoing conversations with five other governors about facilities that they may have." The secretary didn't specify which states but noted that all five of the interested governors are Republicans.
"I would challenge some Democrats to start taking care of your states, partner with us in a way to make your community safer," she said.
"We need to double our capacity in detention beds because we need to facilitate getting people out of this country as fast as possible," Noem added.
Since January, the Trump administration has been increasing its efforts to arrest and detain illegal immigrants. While Congress has allocated funding for around tens of thousands of more beds in the current tax bill, the number of detainees stood at roughly 56,300 as of mid-June.
What People Are Saying
Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski said in a July 3 statement: "It is alarming to see enforcement tactics that treat all irregular immigrants as dangerous criminals. Masked, heavily armed agents who do not identify themselves during enforcement activities are surprising - so is the apparent lack of due process in deportation proceedings in recent months.
Along these lines, much of the current rhetoric is obviously intentionally provocative. It is unbecoming of public officials and corrosive of the common good to speak of the deterrence value of 'alligators and pythons' at the Collier-Dade facility. Common decency requires that we remember the individuals being detained are fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters of distressed relatives."
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told Newsweek in a July 3 statement: "Alligator Alcatraz is a state-of-the-art facility with adequate beds, air-conditioning, on-site medical, and more, that will help get criminal aliens out of the country."
Representative Maxwell Frost, a Florida Democrat, wrote in a statement: "I've toured these facilities myself - real ones, not the makeshift tents they plan to put up - and even those detention centers contain conditions that are nothing short of human rights abuses. Places where people are forced to eat, sleep, shower, and defecate all in the same room. Places where medical attention is virtually non-existent. Anyone who supports this is a disgusting excuse for a human being, let alone a public servant."
What Happens Next?
Noem told reporters there will be announcements regarding the five other states' new facilities and DHS partnerships soon.