President Obama, visiting the southern border in 2011, joked that Republicans were so hardcore that they would demand to use alligators to deter illegal immigrants.
On Tuesday, President Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made that a reality.
The former political rivals linked arms and officially unveiled “Alligator Alcatraz,” a state-built facility in Florida’s Alligator Alley that will provide Immigration and Customs Enforcement with thousands of additional beds to detain and deport illegal immigrants.
Mr. DeSantis said the tent facility was built in just eight days and can start taking migrants as soon as ICE can send them. Because it was erected on the property of Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, those who are ordered deported can be quickly put onto planes and sent out of the U.S.
For good measure, Mr. DeSantis told the president he wants to have the federal government deputize some of his state National Guard lawyers to serve as immigration judges so they can hear cases and issue deportation rulings on site, further speeding the deportations.
Mr. Trump gave him the OK on the spot.
SEE ALSO: Trump offers advice to ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ migrants: ‘Don’t run in a straight line’
The president celebrated the idea as a natural solution to ICE’s bed space crunch.
“Very soon this facility will house some of the most menacing migrants, some of the most vicious people on the planet,” he said. “We’re surrounded by miles of treacherous swampland and the only way out is, really, deportation.”
Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis toured the facility with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
They took in 28,000 feet of barbed wire, 200 security cameras and 400 security personnel. Reporters touring with the president commented on the full-blast air conditioning, which kept out the Florida heat and humidity.
The tents are divided into cells by a chain-link fence. The cells have bunk beds placed close together.
Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis said migrants can self-deport if they don’t like the conditions. Indeed, handouts at the facility’s entrances instruct migrants on withdrawing their cases and agreeing to go home. If the illegal immigrants leave on their own, they won’t face a bar to coming back legally.
Ms. Noem said 1 million migrants have already self-deported under Mr. Trump.
Florida built the facility with state money, though it expects to be reimbursed by the federal government.
Mr. DeSantis, who challenged Mr. Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination before dropping out that January, praised the president, who delivered it right back.
“You’ll always be my friend,” Mr. Trump said. “We have blood that seems to match pretty well.”
Mr. DeSantis said his goal is to establish Florida as the leading state in assisting Mr. Trump’s deportation efforts, though he wondered aloud why other Republican governors weren’t following him.
“Don’t let Florida be the only state,” he said. “We’ve got other red states that should be doing this just as much as Florida.”
The airport lies in the middle of U.S. Highway 41, a road that spans the bottom of the state from Miami to Naples, before turning north toward Georgia.
Its remote location is part of the attraction for supporters, who say the Everglades provides a natural security boundary. That has sparked jokes about the local gator population.
“This is not a nice business,” Mr. Trump told reporters.
He quipped that the Department of Homeland Security would provide an intake briefing to new detainees.
“We’re going to teach them how to run away from an alligator, OK, if they escape from prison. How to run away. Don’t run in a straight line. Run like this,” he said, making a zig-zag motion with his hands.
“You know what? Their chances go up about 1%,” he added.
Mr. Trump’s opponents have bristled at the entire concept.
“Anyone who supports this is a disgusting excuse for a human being, let alone a public servant,” said Rep. Maxwell Frost, Florida Democrat.
Some activists called the facility a “concentration camp,” and the American Civil Liberties Union said it “echoes some of our nation’s darkest history.”
“We cannot stand by while Florida becomes a testing ground for policies rooted in racism, fear and erasure,” said Bacardi Jackson, executive director of the ACLU of Florida.
Although Mr. Trump, Mr. DeSantis and most others call the facility “Alligator Alcatraz,” others have suggested “Gator Gitmo.”
Detention space is one of the major bottlenecks for ICE’s deportation efforts, particularly for people arrested in the interior of the country. Their cases can take far longer than the average border case.
ICE officials say they can deport migrants if they can detain them but the effort is much tougher if the immigrants are out in the community.
As of the middle of June, ICE reported detaining 56,397 people. About 14,400 of those were border arrests, and the rest, about 39,300, were ICE arrests.
Those are record-high levels for the agency, but the administration hopes to have as many as 100,000 beds in its inventory.
The facility has drawn a lawsuit from environmental groups that say the facility would hurt critical habitat and disrupt endangered and threatened species. They said the state needs to perform an environmental assessment before moving ahead.
In court documents, Florida said the law under which the groups are suing applies to the federal government but not the state. Besides, Florida argued, the airport is already there, serving about 28,000 flights in the past six months, with two buildings lit 24 hours a day.
The detention facility will have “minimal” impact beyond that, Keith Pruett, a Florida Division of Emergency Management official, told the court.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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