Trump To Tour New Migrant Detention in Florida Dubbed ‘Alligator Alcatraz’

President Trump, who allegedly once joked about building a “moat” filled with alligators and snakes to deter migrants from crossing into America at the Mexican border, is reported to be heading down to Florida on Tuesday to visit a new migrant detention center dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” being built in the Everglades.The Federal Aviation Administration has issued a “VIP Movement Notification” for July 1 for Ochopee, Florida, where the new prison is situated, according to a report from the Palm Beach Post. The alert calls for a protective inner core radius of 10 nautical miles around the site and an outer ring radius of 30 nautical miles — distances usually reserved for the president.The hastily built migrant detention facility in the middle of the Everglades National Park is the brainchild of Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis. “Clearly, from a security perspective, if someone escapes, you know, there’s a lot of alligators. No one’s going anywhere,” he recently bragged about the facility.The quick construction of “Alligator Alcatraz” since it was first announced last week prompted hundreds of protesters to flood onto part of U.S. Highway 41 over the weekend as dump trucks hauled building materials into nearby Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport near Big Cypress National Preserve. The coalition of protesters ranged from environmental activists complaining about the project’s impact on animal species in the area to Native Americans upset about encroachment on tribal lands.“Everybody out here sees the exhaust fumes, sees the oil slicks on the road, you know, they hear the sound and the noise pollution. You can imagine what it looks like at nighttime, and we’re in an international dark sky area,” the founder of Floridians for Public Lands, Jessica Namath, said to the Associated Press. “It’s very frustrating because, again, there’s such disconnect for politicians.”A cadre of environmental organizations, including Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity, filed a lawsuit on Friday in an attempt to put a halt on construction of the facility, alleging that officials had failed to conduct a required assessment of its environmental impact as well as circumvented public comment — violations of the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act. They are seeking to have construction on Alligator Alcatraz halted until a full environmental review is completed. Mr. DeSantis said in a recent interview with Fox News that no permanent changes would be made to the area. “It’s all temporary,” he said. “We’ll set it up, and we’ll break it down. This isn’t our first rodeo. The impact will be zero.”Since the new facility was announced last week, crews have been working in overdrive to have it up and running by Tuesday.The remote facility, in an isolated section of the Everglades, consists primarily of large tents erected on a defunct airport’s runway and is part of a broader federal effort to encourage local authorities to enhance their detention capacities.The goal is to have 5,000 beds at the new center, as well as some smaller facilities in the region.“Under President Trump’s leadership, we are working at turbo speed on cost-effective and innovative ways to deliver on the American people’s mandate for mass deportations of criminal illegal aliens,” the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, said in a statement to CBS News. “We will expand facilities and bed space in just days, thanks to our partnership with Florida.”Native American leaders blasted the construction, calling it an encroachment on sacred land. Big Cypress, in which the new facility lies, is a federally protected preserve of biodiverse wetlands and forested areas and is the home to more than a dozen traditional villages for the Miccosukee and Seminole Tribes. “We live here. Our ancestors fought and died here. They are buried here,” the Miccosukee chairman, Talbert Cypress, said in a statement posted on social media. “The Big Cypress is part of us, and we are a part of it.”

Trump To Tour New Migrant Detention in Florida Dubbed ‘Alligator Alcatraz’

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