‘Alligator Alcatraz’: The airport of the future becomes symbol of Trump’s migrant clampdown
“If people get out, there’s not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons.”
That’s what Florida‘s attorney general has said about the new ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ detention centre in the southern US state.
It is a symbol of the White House’s determination to deport migrants from America which it says do not have a right to be in the country.
Trump visits ‘Alligator Alcatraz’. Pic: Reuters
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.
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.”
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.
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.”
Donald Trump has said he wants to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un again.
Speaking at the White House as he held talks with the new South Korean president Lee Jae Myung, Mr Trump told reporters: “I’d like to meet him this year… I look forward to meeting with Kim Jong Un in the appropriate future.”
“I’d like to have a meeting. I got along great with him,” President Trump said, adding they “became very friendly” during his first term in office.
“We think we can do something in that regard,” he said, adding that he would like to help the relationship between the two Koreas.
Trump and Kim at the demilitarized zone in June 2019. Pic: Reuters
Mr Trump and Mr Kim held three meetings between 2018 and 2019 during Mr Trump’s first term and exchanged a number of, what the president called, “beautiful” letters.
In June 2019, Mr Trump briefly stepped into North Korea from the demilitarized zone (DMZ) with South Korea.
The US president on Monday responded to a question about whether he would return to the DMZ by fondly recalling the last time he did so.
“Remember when I walked across the line and everyone went crazy?” especially the Secret Service, Mr Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
But “I loved it”, Mr Trump said. He added he felt safe because he had a good relationship with Mr Kim.
Mr Trump met South Korea’s Lee Jae Myung at the Oval Office on Monday. Pic: Reuters
Mr Trump became the first sitting American president to set foot on North Korean soil six years ago.
However, little progress was made in curbing North Korea’s nuclear programme, and Mr Trump acknowledged in March this year that Pyongyang is a “nuclear power”.
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Since Mr Trump’s first-term meetings with Mr Kim ended, North Korea has shown no interest in returning to talks.
The White House said in June that Mr Trump would welcome communications with Mr Kim.
The attempts at rapprochement come after the election in South Korea of Mr Lee, who has pledged to reopen dialogue with North Korea.
As a gesture of engagement in June, Mr Lee suspended South Korean loudspeakers blasting music and messages into the North at the DMZ along their shared border.
Analysts say, however, that engaging North Korea will likely be more difficult for both Mr Lee and Mr Trump than it was in the president’s first term.
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Since then, North Korea has significantly expanded its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes.
And it has developed close ties with Russia through direct support for Moscow’s war in Ukraine, with Pyongyang providing both troops and weaponry.
Mr Kim told Russian President Vladimir Putin that his country will always stand with Moscow, state media reported in June.
US rapper Lil Nas X has pleaded not guilty after being charged with assaulting a police officer while walking in downtown Los Angeles in his underwear.
The musician, real name Montero Lamar Hill, was taken to hospital and arrested after police responded to reports of a naked man shortly before 6am on Thursday.
The district attorney’s office said on Monday that Lil Nas X faces three counts of battery with injury on a police officer and one count of resisting an executive officer.
He was being held on a $75,000 (£55,457) bail, conditional on attending drug treatment. It is not immediately clear whether he had posted it and been released yet.
He is set to return to court on 15 September for his next pre-trial hearing.
Pic: AP
During the hearing on Monday, Hill’s lawyer Christy O’Connor told the judge he had led a “remarkable” life, adding: “Assuming the allegations here are true, this is an absolute aberration in this person’s life.
“Nothing like this has ever happened to him.”
A law enforcement source told Sky’s US partner network, NBC News, on Thursday that the Old Town Road and Industry Baby hitmaker punched an officer twice in the face during the encounter.
The source added officers were unsure whether he was on any substances or in mental distress.
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NBC News cited TMZ footage where Hill was seen walking down the middle of Ventura Boulevard at 4am on Thursday in a pair of white briefs and cowboy boots.
In the videos, Hill tells a driver to “come to the party” in one clip and in another tells the person: “Didn’t I tell you to put the phone down?”
“Uh oh, someone’s going to have to pay for that,” Hill says as he continues to walk away.
In some clips, Hill struts as if he’s on a catwalk, posing for onlookers, and at one point he places an orange traffic cone on his head.
A man who was wrongly deported from the US to El Salvador has been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) again.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a 30-year-old originally from El Salvador, handed himself into the ICE field office in Baltimore, Maryland, for a check-in on Monday.
The visit was a mandatory condition of his release from federal custody earlier this weekend. However, in a court filing on Saturday, his lawyers said they expected Garcia would be detained again upon attending.
Garcia is charged in an indictment, filed in federal court in Tennessee, with conspiring to transport illegal immigrants into the US.
An emotional Kilmar Abrego Garcia appears outside the ICE Baltimore field office on 25 August 2025. Pic: Reuters
According to a court filing by his lawyers, immigration officials made an offer to Garcia to be deported to Costa Rica in exchange for pleading guilty to the charges.
Otherwise, they would seek to deport him to Uganda.
Pics: Reuters
Speaking at a news conference outside the ICE office on Monday morning, Garcia said via a translator: “This administration has hit us hard, but I want to tell you guys something: God is with us, and God will never leave us.
“God will bring justice to all the injustice we are suffering.”
Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of Garcia’s lawyers, also said: “There was no need to take him into ICE detention… the only reason they took him into detention was to punish him.”
A judge later ruled Garcia could not be deported after he filed a challenge asking to be allowed due process to fight any removal attempt.
Judge Paula Xinis ruled the 30-year-old must remain detained in the US until she can hold an evidentiary hearing – set for Wednesday.
She added there appeared to be “several grounds” for her to have jurisdiction to exercise relief, including that Uganda has not agreed to offer Garcia protections, such as being able to walk freely, being given refugee status, and not being re-deported to El Salvador.
After initially being detained in Maryland – where he lived with his American wife and children – by ICE in March, Garcia was sent to El Salvador, where he was then imprisoned in the country’s maximum security Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT).
This was despite an immigration judge’s 2019 order granting him protection from deportation after finding he was likely to be persecuted by local gangs if he was returned to his native country.
Garcia was first detained by ICE in March. Pic: CASA/AP
The Trump administration admitted deporting Garcia was an “administrative error”, but said at the time they could not bring him back as they do not have jurisdiction over El Salvador.
After eventually returning him to the US in June, the Trump administration detained Garcia on criminal charges that were filed in May.
The criminal indictment alleges Garcia worked with at least five co-conspirators to bring immigrants to the US illegally and transport them from the border to other destinations in the country.
Minutes after his release on Friday, officials notified Garcia they intended to deport him to Uganda.
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Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem, US President Donald Trump, vice president JD Vance and other officials claim Garcia was a member of MS-13 – an international criminal gang formed by immigrants who had fled El Salvador‘s civil war to protect Salvadoran immigrants from rival gangs.
Garcia’s lawyers strongly deny the claims.
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