Lawmakers visit 'Alligator Alcatraz,' but some wonder how much they'll get to see
Source: AP
Updated 2:48 PM EDT, July 12, 2025
OCHOPEE, Fla. (AP) — Florida lawmakers took a state-arranged tour of the new Everglades immigration detention center on Saturday after some were blocked earlier from viewing the remote facility that officials have dubbed “ Alligator Alcatraz.”
Democratic and Republican state legislators and members of Congress were heading into the facility Saturday morning. So many politicians turned up that they were split into multiple groups to tour the 3,000-bed detention center that the state rapidly built on an isolated airstrip surrounded by swampland.
Gov. Ron DeSantis and fellow Republicans have touted the makeshift detention center — an agglomeration of tents, trailers and temporary buildings constructed in a matter of days — as an efficient and get-tough response to President Donald Trump’s call for mass deportations. The first detainees arrived July 3, after Trump toured and praised the facility.
Described as temporary, the detention center is meant to help the Republican president’s administration reach its goal of boosting the United States’ migrant detention capacity from 41,000 people to at least 100,000. The Florida facility’s remote location and its name — a nod to the notorious Alcatraz prison that once housed federal inmates in California — are meant to underscore a message of deterring illegal immigration.
Read more: https://apnews.com/article/alligator-alcatraz-immigration-detainees-florida-dd1cd271b864a72e6fed1f95d62ee8f7
REFERENCE - https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143494806