The center holds risks of hurricanes, flooding, and mosquitoes, experts say
Experts are concerned about the dangerous conditions at Alligator Alcatraz, the immigrant detention center that opened Tuesday in the Florida Everglades. Hurricanes, flooding, and mosquitoes pose a more likely threat to people incarcerated there than the alligators and snakes that President Donald Trump has “joked” about.
Built in eight days, the facility consists of large tents, bunk beds, and chain link fences that form cages to hold about 3,000 people. It has already flooded once. Despite the rudimentary setup, it will cost $450 million a year to run, according to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
The first group of immigrants have already been brought to Alligator Alcatraz, according to the Florida Division of Emergency Management. “Florida is proud to help facilitate @realDonaldTrump’s mission to enforce immigration law,” the division posted on X.
The facility’s inhospitable nature is a selling point for Republicans. “If people get out, there’s not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons,” Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said in a video promoting Alligator Alcatraz. “Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.”
The immigrants “are in a facility that is very inaccessible to lawyers, to family members, to oversight,” Renata Bozzetto, deputy director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, told The Washington Post in an article published Saturday. “So the location being so remote and isolated is a problem. Being in an environmentally fragile ecosystem is a problem. Being constructed with temporary materials will be catastrophic in case of a hurricane.”
The facility is in a High-Velocity Hurricane Zone, where building code requires that buildings have a