What you see in the main picture is a satellite shot of the airport runways on which Alligator Alcatraz is being built. What is there now is only a start. Here's another look from the air.
The airport runway set.
It was originally called the Everglades Jetport. It was going to be the biggest airport in the world with six 10,500 foot runways able to handle supersonic commercial jets. It was going to connect with Miami and the Gulf of Mexico by expressway and monorail. It was begun in 1968 and things just didn't work out. There were the Concorde and the Russian Tu-144 SSTs, but with the cancelation of the Boeing 2707, and environmental concerns, construction was halted in 1970 with just one of the runway sets built.
Boeing 2707 full scale mock-up.
What was built became known as the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport. The isolation of the airport meant it could be used for training of how to land in poor weather and visibility without interfering with the traffic at Miami International. It was still open for general aviation until now. Alligator Alcatraz is being built on the runways. The whole area set for the airport was 39 square miles.
Friends of the Everglades sent a letter to Ron DeSantis to have him kill the idea. It was already too late. On Friday, June 27th, Friends of the Everglades filed suit to stop it. They argued that Florida officials and the federal government have bypassed environmental regulations in the speedy construction of the detention facility.
You could call it a concentration camp. It's worse than the WWII internment camps. It's not yet a camp like Dachau. When Hitler took power in 1933, the first the he did was to build Dachau. In three months. It opened in March 1933. At first it was for political prisoners. It was enlarged to include forced labor, then the Jews, Romani and those considered criminals were sent there. Dachau didn't need extermination facilities. People were simply worked to death.
There are already road signs actually calling it Alligator Alcatraz.
Alligator Alcatraz was first said going to contain 1,000 detainees. Now It's 3,000. With the paved runway, there's nearly unlimited space to expand. And just what are people going to do there every day? Are they locked up in these cages for 24 hours a day? There is no toilet or running water in the cages. I haven't seen shots outside of the tents showing porta potties.
The cages.
The cages themselves are chainlink fencing. Double-decker bunk beds, with what looks like a 4-inch brown foam pad. The tent is not going to work very well in Florida's weather. It probably won't deal well with rain or wind. When hurricane force winds come along, everything will get blown away. What are they going to do then? Rebuild. More money for the builders again. What about the detainees during such a extreme weather event? That doesn't seem to be a consideration.
Who is going to provide security? Florida National Guard. 100 troops are going to handle the entry points and the perimeter. That number could increase. Florida State Highway Patrol is manning things until the Guard is needed.
In addition to security, the state has enlisted the help of dozens of private companies to help erect a small grid of tents and trailers with on-site medical services, a kitchen and portable restrooms --- where workers and detainees will be spending their days during the months to ahead.
Who knows what the whole facility would look like when it's completed and all the construction materials are gone.
Private contracts. Months ago, Tom Homan said that when ICE had captured immigrants, everything else would be contracted out. Here you go.
Supposedly, detainees are already at the facility, and got there on Wednesday. It was built incredibly fast for however many the first group of detainees contains.
DHS's Thursday filings contrast what Kristi Noem, the department's head, and the president have said about FEMA's funding of the detention center, which is projected to cost $450 million annually.
How is this possible? If you put just one of these in each of the 50 states you're talking about $22 billion dollars a year for 150,000 detainees, at 3,000 detainees a pop. I recently researched a private prison company that was going to try to reopen Leavenworth, and they were only going to get $62 million for operating it. That was for 1,100 prisoners. There's something wrong here with the cost of this operation. It's not even covering the cost of the initial construction, and we have no idea what that is. $450 million is for operating each year. Trump wants this setup because it's so quick to build, where prisons take years.
The facility parked on the one runway.
National Guard and Highway Patrol are already paid, so the security costs nothing, unless they are taken away from work that isn't covered by other members, and you're essentially hiring new Guard and Highway Patrol.
Trump said during his tour of the facility on Tuesday that "We took the FEMA money that Joe Biden allocated to pay for free luxury hotel rooms where he's paying hundreds of millions of dollars in New York City, and we used it to build this project."
Right now the money to build a facility came from the state of Florida, thanks to Ron DeSantis.
In response to the suit by Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity, counsel for DHS and ICE wrote, "Florida has received no federal funds, nor has it applied for federal funds related to the temporary detention center. Courts cannot adjudicate hypothetical future funding decisions or render advisory opinions on contingent scenarios that may never materialize."
DeSantis used a 2023 emergency declaration against immigration to expropriate the land from Miami-Dade County. That same declaration was used to build the camp. It is being used to operate the camp until if and when Trump's administration pays for it. There could be some sneaky way US government money could be funneled to Florida for another purpose and used to pay for it.
Deportation flights are to be handled by the federal government. There's that second parallel runway they haven't touched.
Earlier in the week FDEM [Florida Division of Emergency Management] Director Kevin Guthrie argued in a filing to the court that the detention center is necessary to alleviate overcrowding in ice detention centers. Five people have died in ICE custody in Florida this year, according to agency press releases. As of June 15th, ICE held 56,397 people in detention, exceeding the 41,500 it has the funds to detain in the 2024 fiscal year.
The lawsuit to stop construction cited a letter from Danniela Levine Cava, the Miami-Dade County mayor, which said, "With the federal and state government investing well over $10 billion since 2019 in Everglades restoration and protection, we would appreciate the detailed analysis and report on environmental impacts of this facility to the Everglades."
The New York Times says that it's going to be a 5,000 bed facility with prefabricated housing, water and sewage infrastructure, security fencing and high intensity security lighting. So, it's gone from 1,000 to 3,000 and now to 5,000 detainees possible. Where will this all end?
Friends of the Everglades was formed in 1969 to oppose the building of the now reused airport built in the Everglades. They succeeded in stopping additional construction, so the only thing left are the runways that were built.
The Department of Justice is, of course, fighting to stop a temporary restraining order from being granted. However, because they say the federal government hasn't provided any funds, they really don't have standing to oppose the temporary restraining order. Only the State of Florida can respond. This might involve the citizens of Florida who might just be a little upset that they're paying for this facility that's going to cost untold amounts of money to build and $450 million to run each year.
This did not stop the Department of Justice from sticking their nose in with, "Here, the significant national interest in combating unlawful immigration favors allowing Florida to continue the development use of its facility." Here we go, national interest and national security override all civil rights.
So, there must be a number of companies that are going to make money off of this construction, where we have no cost listed, and operation at $450 million a year, and there are a bunch.
Lemoine CDR Logistics and CDR Healthcare, whose owner is a significant donor to Republican political action committees, the owner confirmed his involvement but couldn't provide details due to a non-disclosure agreement. Right.
Granny's Alliance Holdings Inc has a $3.3 million contract to provide meals.
IRG Global Emergency Management has a $1.1 million contract for flight and operational support services.
SLSCO Ltd is a construction company that was also involved in building part of the border wall during Trump's first administration.
Garner Environmental Services is a disaster relief company.
Doodie Calls is a portable toilet company. Cute name.
GardaWorld is one of the world's largest security services.
Gotham LLC is a disaster logistics company.
Longview International Technological Solutions is tough to find anything out about, except for a review from somebody who said that they would never work for a company like this again.
If you guessed that many of these companies had given money to DeSantis's campaign, you'd be right.
For 2024, ICE's budget was $9.9 billion. The new 2025 budget for ICE is $150 billion for the next 4 years in the Big Ugly Bill. This is a massive change. They will probably have trouble figuring out how to spend all the money.
This song and dance with Trump saying FEMA funds are being used to build and operate Alligator Alcatraz, and DOJ saying no federal funds are being used will have to stop in court at some time.
Floridians may not be happy with DeSantis using their money to create and operate Alligator Alcatraz. In 2022, DeSantis used taxpayer money to fly a plane load of immigrants to Martha's Vineyard in a stunt. In 2023, the Florida legislature gave DeSantis another $10 million to fly immigrants, even from other states, to sanctuary cities. There were all kinds of lawsuits, but nothing ever happened. He used some of that money to pay for a flight from Texas to Sacramento, California, the capital of a sanctuary state. But this cost is an order of magnitude more.
We're stuck with the name Alligator Alcatraz. Road signs prove it. There will be some grand entrance way signage to be put up.
This is a test to see just how much the federal government and states can get away with in this insane campaign against immigrants. With nearly unlimited resources, ICE can try whatever creative neo-Nazi experiment they want.
Some of the half of the nation that voted for this are having second thoughts. Too late.
