Inside ‘Alligator Alcatraz’: GOP Donor Profits and Environmental Risks in Florida’s Newest Immigration Detention Center

In less than two weeks, Florida transformed a remote training airfield nestled within the Everglades—a habitat home to endangered panthers and fragile wetlands—into what is now infamously dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.” This sprawling immigration detention facility, hastily erected amid environmental protests, is emblematic of the reckless politicization of immigration enforcement under Republican leadership. Jae Williams, spokesperson for Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier—the architect of this controversial project—famously declared, "We are dealing with a storm. And the storm's name is immigration." Yet what has unfolded on swampland about 45 miles west of Miami resembles not an emergency response to a natural disaster...