Located on a mostly abandoned airport once built to house supersonic jets, detainees would have to “know how to run away from an alligator” to escape the facility, President Donald Trump said on Tuesday.
But for critics, it’s a dehumanising “theatricalisation of cruelty” that will cost hundreds of millions of dollars to run each year.
What is Alligator Alcatraz?
The Dade-Collier airport was once destined to be the world’s largest airport and would have been five times the size of New York City’s JFK, but it never fulfilled its potential.
Instead, the 39-square-mile facility located about 50 miles from Miami has been used as a training facility for years – until now.
“This is an old, virtually abandoned airport facility right in the middle of the Everglades,” Florida’s attorney general James Uthmeier said as he introduced it last month. “I call it: Alligator Alcatraz.”
He touted it as an “efficient, low-cost opportunity” to build a “temporary” detention centre “because you don’t need to invest that much in the perimeter”.
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It’s believed that the facility could house 5,000 detainees when up and running and, according to CNN, will cost $450m (£328m) annually.
Mr Uthmeier added: “If people get out, there’s not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons. Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.”
People sent there will be housed in repurposed Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) emergency trailers and “soft-sided temporary facilities”.
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Trump visits new facility
“This is not a nice business,” Mr Trump said while leaving the White House. Then he joked that “we’re going to teach them how to run away from an alligator if they escape prison”, ahead of visiting the centre.
“Don’t run in a straight line. Run like this,” he said, as he moved his hand in a zigzag motion. “And you know what? Your chances go up about 1%.” According to the University of Florida, it’s actually best to dash in one direction in the rare situation when an alligator chases you.
Mr Trump is using ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ as a symbol of his border crackdown.
Image: Donald Trump has said he wants to see similar facilities in other US states. Pic: Reuters
He wants to pressure Congress to pass a sweeping spending bill this week, which would ramp up deportations.
After being given a tour of the centre, the US president said: “Pretty soon, this facility will handle the most menacing migrants, some of the most vicious people on the planet.
“I looked outside and that’s not a place I want to go hiking anytime soon.
“We’re surrounded by miles of treacherous swampland and the only way out is really deportation.”
Image: Trailers seen at the new detention centre. Pic: AP
Immigrants ‘do not deserve’ to be at facility
There has been heavy criticism of the detention centre from Democrats and activists, with protesters often gathering nearby.
Former congressman David Jolly, an ex-Republican who is now running for Florida governor as a Democrat, called the facility a “callous political stunt”.
“The fact that we’re going to have 3,000 people detained in tents, in the Everglades, in the middle of the hot Florida summer, during hurricane season, this is a bad idea all around that needs to be opposed and stopped,” Thomas Kennedy, a policy analyst for the Florida Immigrant Coalition said, according to CNN.
Image: Protesters have gathered nearby to demonstrate against it. Pic: AP
“It’s like a theatricalisation of cruelty,” immigration activist Maria Asuncion Bilbao said.
Phyllis Andrews, a retired teacher who travelled to the area to protest against Mr Trump’s visit, said: “I have a lot of immigrants I have been working with. They are fine people. They do not deserve to be incarcerated here.
“It’s terrible that there’s a bounty on their head.”
A manhunt is under way after a married couple were killed while hiking with their children in an Arkansas state park.
Clinton Brink, 43, and Cristen Brink, 41, were walking with their daughters, who are aged seven and nine, when they were attacked in Devil’s Den State Park on Saturday afternoon, according to Arkansas State Police.
Officers were called to reports of two people dead in the park at around 2.40pm, before their bodies were found on a walking trail.
Arkansas’s state lab are working to determine their cause of death, officials said.
Their children were not injured and are safe with relatives, authorities added.
A statement from the Brink family said the couple “died heroes, protecting their little girls”.
“They deserve justice. They will forever live in all our hearts,” the family added, asking for privacy as they “grieve and learn to navigate this new reality”.
The couple had only moved to Arkansas three weeks ago, having previously lived in California and eastern Montana, Mr Brink’s sister Karina Hutchins said.
Officials have not said how the couple were killed and have not provided a possible motive for the attack.
The suspect has been described as white, of medium build, and was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, a dark baseball cap, and sunglasses.
He was also carrying a black backpack and wearing fingerless gloves.
Police said he could have sustained injuries during the attack and exited the park in a black, four-door car, possibly a Mazda, with the number plate covered with duct tape.
He is then believed to have travelled on State Highway 170 or State Highway 220 to escape.
Sir Keir Starmer travelled to Scotland for talks with Donald Trump, with the US president publicly distancing himself from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has said there is no starvation in Gaza. How significant is this moment, as renewed UK-US aid efforts to the Strip are announced?
Plus, Trump cuts down Putin’s deadline to stop Russia’s war in Ukraine. And Martha speaks to one of the 252 Venezuelans deported by Trump to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. He describes brutal torture and dehumanisation – this despite not ever having committed a crime.
If you’ve got a question you’d like the Trump100 team to answer, you can email it to trump100@sky.uk.
A number of European leaders have hit out at the terms of the United States and European Union trade deal.
Speaking after talks in Turnberry, Mr Trump told reporters it was the “biggest deal ever made” and will be “great for cars” as well as having a “big impact” on agriculture.
European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said the “big deal” would help bring “stability” to trade after months of turmoil over the threat of a trade war.
The US will impose 15% tariffs on most EU goods entering America, after Mr Trump had threatened a 30% levy.
But French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou said of the terms: “It is a sombre day when an alliance of free peoples, brought together to affirm their common values and to defend their common interests, resigns itself to submission.”
Long-time EU critic, Hungarian PM Viktor Orban, responded: “This is not an agreement … Donald Trump ate von der Leyen for breakfast, this is what happened and we suspected this would happen as the U.S. president is a heavyweight when it comes to negotiations while Madame President is featherweight.”
Image: President Donald Trump shakes hands with European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen in Turnberry. Pic: Reuters
Others welcomed news of an agreement but seemed resigned to the terms.
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The deal includes $600bn (£446bn) of EU investments in the US, and the bloc will buy $750bn (£558bn) of US energy and also purchase American military equipment.
Mr Trump said: “I think it’s great that we made a deal today instead of playing games and maybe not making a deal at all.”
He said: “We are agreeing that the tariff… for automobiles and everything else will be a straight across tariff of 15%.” However, the 15% baseline rate would not apply to steel and aluminium, for which a 50% tariff would stay in place.
Ms Von der Leyen said: “We have a trade deal between the two largest economies in the world and it’s a big deal, it’s a huge deal. It will bring stability, it will bring predictability, that’s very important for our businesses on both sides of the Atlantic.”
She said the agreement would include 15% tariffs “across the board”, and it would help rebalance trade between the two large trading partners.
She said the levy rate was the “best we could get” regarding the car sector.
But she added that there was “no decision” on the spirits sector, which was one of those areas where the details in the framework trade deal would have to be examined in the coming weeks.
Mr Trump had earlier said the main sticking point was “fairness”, citing barriers to US exports of cars and agriculture.
He went into the talks demanding fairer trade with the 27-member bloc and threatening steep tariffs to achieve that, while insisting the US will not go below 15% import taxes.
For months, Mr Trump has threatened most of the world with large tariffs in the hope of shrinking major US trade deficits with many key trading partners, including the EU.
In case there was no deal and the US had imposed 30% tariffs from 1 August, the EU has prepared counter-tariffs on €93bn (£81bn) of US goods.
Ahead of their meeting on Sunday, Ms Von der Leyen described Mr Trump as a “tough negotiator and dealmaker”.