Law enforcement conducts security checks on June 28, 2025 at the future site of ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ in the Florida Everglades. Credit: Photo by Dave Decker

Despite environmental concerns and a lawsuit contesting its operation, construction of Florida’s so-called “Alligator Alcatraz” is well underway in the Everglades. Last Saturday, while Gov. Ron DeSantis continued gloating after the state seized land to build a 5,000-bed facility to house people ensnared in Donald Trump’s mass deportation, protesters lined Tamiami Trail outside to share their discontent.

The Associated Press said that hundreds of activists—including environmentalists and Native Americans fighting for their ancestral home—stood on the shoulders of the roads while trucks hauled building materials into Dade Collier Training and Transition Airport. The facility could cost $450 million a year to operate, according to the Miami Herald, which added that funds would come from a FEMA program that the Biden administration used to support local governments and nonprofits that “house, feed, and transport immigrants released and processed by Homeland Security.”

Last Friday, a day before the protests over the weekend, former Florida State Sen. Jeff Brandes was in Tampa where he told WMNF public affairs program The Skinny that folks concerned about the treatment of prisoners in the Sunshine State should be asking questions about how “Alligator Alcatraz” will be staffed.

Jeff Brandes at WMNF in Tampa, Florida on June 27, 2025 Credit: Photo by Ray Roa

“I think you’re going to get the National Guard back in there. I think you’re going to have all kinds of issues with staffing,” Brandes, who now leads the Florida Policy Project, said. “This is much more of a kind of a Japanese internment camp kind of problem. It’s kind of like a Mexican internment camp, a South American internment camp, versus an Alcatraz situation.”

On top of that, Brandes added, is the question of who will actually operate “Alligator Alcatraz. “If it’s a state facility, legislators can walk in any day and night, and you’ll have plenty of visibility there. Is it a federal facility, or is it a state facility that is leased to the feds? That’s an important distinction,” he said.

Moments before Brandes’ comments in Tampa, Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court Southern District of Florida—followed by a motion for expedited relief, seeking entry of a temporary restraining order by July 1—according to Florida Phoenix. Plaintiffs include the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Florida Division of Management, and Miami-Dade County.

In the suit, Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades, says the site of “Alligator Alcatraz”—announced by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier less than two weeks ago—is more than 96% wetlands all surrounded by the state’s Big Cypress National Preserve. The park is home to the endangered Florida Panther and other species specific to the Sunshine State. ““The scheme is not only cruel, it threatens the Everglades ecosystem that state and federal taxpayers have spent billions to protect,” she added.

Also speaking to WMNF last Friday, Marcelo Balladares, an organizing representative at the Sierra Club’s Florida chapter, said that the government takeover of the land—made possible by Florida law which says that the governor has power to take over or use private property to “cope” with an emergency—steamrolls the usual processes involving environmental environmental impact statements and other protocol. In fact, the state’s actions are already bringing more humans and traffic to the site and surrounding habitats.

“Big Cypress is also one of the United States’ designated dark sky areas and having the lights that they’re going to need is going to disturb those habitats that nocturnal creatures depend on,” Balladares said. “And those folks who come out there for ecotourism, for example, they’re not going to be able to get that view that they came there looking for.”

Balladares said folks are looking to state legislators and representatives on both sides of the aisle to react the way they did last year when plans to put hotels and pickleball courts in Florida State Parks galvanized voters. “I think there’s a lot of opportunity for that to happen again here because it is our Everglades. It’s something that all Floridians will feel, especially in southern and central Florida at one point or another,” he added.

Signs outside the facility reflected the environmental concerns while others took aim at “Florida’s #1 invasive snake,” DeSantis and called for the governor and Trump to be in prison.

Others—like the one that said, “No cell blocks in sacred swamps” and “Indigenous homeland, not ‘empty wetland’”—spoke to the fact that the Everglades were first inhabited by tribes like the Calusa. Seminole and Miccosukee Indians are also connected to the land, with the latter taking refuge in the Everglades during the Seminole War.

Among the protesters in the Everglades last Saturday was Miccosukee Tribe member and activist Betty Osceola, who can walk to the future prison site from her chickee village.

“It’s a place where we come for healing, where we come to pray,” she told NBC.