The Department of Homeland Security has confirmed it is building a detention centre to temporarily hold migrants in the Florida Everglades.
Secretary Kristi Noem said the facility – dubbed the Alligator Alcatraz – would be funded “in large part” by the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s shelter and services programme, which was previously used to fund accommodation and other aid for undocumented migrants.
The plan has been criticised by several lawmakers, including the mayor of Miami-Dade County, who argued it could be environmentally “devastating”.
The proposal comes as Trump tries to deliver on a campaign pledge to ramp up deportations of illegal migrants.
“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,” Noem said in a statement.
“We will expand facilities and bed space in just days, thanks to our partnership with Florida.”
The facility is to be built on the site of the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, a public airport around 58km (36 miles) from Miami. It will cost about $450m (£332m) a year to run.
In a video posted on X, Florida’s Attorney General James Uthmeier called the airport a “virtually abandoned facility”.
He said the detention centre could be built in 30 to 60 days and hold an estimated 1,000 people.
He argued the location acted as a natural deterrent for escapees.
Uthmeier said in the video: “[If] people, get out, there’s not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons. Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.”
The Democratic mayor of Miami-Dade County, Daniela Levine Cava, criticised the plan, saying the “the impacts to the Everglades ecosystem could be devastating”.
The Florida Everglades are a unique environmental region comprising marshes, prairies, forests, mangroves and estuaries. But Uthmeier said the facility would not be located within Everglades National Park.
