By Trevor Hunnicutt, Evelyn Hockstein and Maria Alejandra Cardona
OCHOPEE, Florida (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday toured a remote migrant detention center in the Florida Everglades dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” as his Republican allies advanced a sweeping spending bill that could ramp up deportations.
The facility sits some 37 miles (60 km) from Miami in a vast subtropical wetland teeming with alligators, crocodiles and pythons, fearsome imagery the White House has leveraged to show its determination to purge migrants it says were wrongly allowed to stay in the country under former President Joe Biden’s administration.
Trump raved about the facility’s quick construction as he scanned rows of dozens of empty bunk beds enclosed in cages and warned about the threatening conditions surrounding the facility.
“I looked outside and that’s not a place I want to go hiking anytime soon,” Trump said at a roundtable event after his tour. “We’re surrounded by miles of treacherous swampland and the only way out is really deportation.”
The complex in southern Florida at the Dade Collier Training and Transition Airport is estimated to cost $450 million annually and could house some 5,000 people, officials estimate.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has said he will send 100 National Guard troops there and that people could start arriving to the facility as soon as Wednesday.
In promoting the opening of the facility, U.S. officials posted on social media images of alligators wearing Immigration and Customs Enforcement hats. The Florida Republican Party is selling gator-themed clothing and beer koozies.
HARDLINE POLICIES
The Republican-controlled U.S. Senate voted on Tuesday to pass a bill that adds tens of billions of dollars for immigration enforcement alongside several of the president’s other tax-and-spending plans.
Trump has lobbied fiercely to have the bill passed before the July 4 Independence Day holiday, and the measure still needs a final sign-off from the House of Representatives.
The Republican president, who maintains a home in Florida, has for a decade made hardline border policies central to his political agenda. One in eight 2024 U.S. election voters said immigration was the most important issue.
But Trump’s campaign pledges to deport as many as 1 million people per year have run up against protests by the affected communities, legal challenges, employer demands for cheap labor and a funding crunch for a government running chronic deficits.
Lawyers for some of the detained migrants have challenged the legality of the deportations and criticized the conditions in temporary detention facilities.
The numbers in federal immigration detention have risen sharply to 56,000 by June 15, from 39,000 when Trump took office, government data show, and his administration has pushed to find more space.
The White House has said the detentions are a necessary public safety measure, and some of the detained migrants have criminal records, though U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention statistics also show an eight-fold increase in arrests of people charged only with immigration violations.
Trump has spoken admiringly of vast, isolated prisons built by El Salvador and his administration has held some migrants at the Guantanamo Bay naval base, in Cuba, best known for housing foreign terrorism suspects following the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat who represents a district near the Florida facility, said in an emailed statement that “Trump and Republicans badly need this wasteful, dangerous, mass misery distraction” from a bill that would cause state residents to lose their health care benefits.
Some local leaders, including from the nearby Miccosukee and Seminole tribes, have objected to the facility’s construction and noted the area’s sensitive environment. The construction has drawn crowds of demonstrators.
Trump dismissed the environmental concerns on Tuesday, saying in wide-ranging remarks that the wetlands’ wildlife would outlast the human species. He said the detention facility was a template for what he’d like to do nationwide.
“We’d like to see them in many states,” Trump said.
(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington, Evelyn Hockstein and Maria Alejandra Cardona in Ochopee, Florida; Additional reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Mary Milliken, Colleen Jenkins, Nick Zieminski and Alistair Bell)
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