“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.” – William Shakespeare
While the Occupant of the White House has wreaked havoc on the lives and fortunes of immigrant families in Los Angeles, New York, and other sanctuary cities, his MAGA partner in Florida has been working just as diligently to wage war on undocumented immigrants and foreign-born, brown-skinned U.S. citizens.
The DeSantis administration made it unlawful for anyone to transport undocumented immigrants, characterizing that act as human smuggling. Senate Bill 1718 also invalidated drivers licenses issued by other states to undocumented immigrants; orders that hospitals and clinics that accept Medicaid question patients about their immigration status and report these data (without personally identifiable information) to the state; and the law now requires undocumented individuals taken into custody by a law enforcement agency to submit a DNA sample when he or she is booked into a jail, correctional, or juvenile facility.
(The U.S.Supreme Court has for now upheld an injunction against the law pending a legal challenge.)
DeSantis announced in February that the Florida Highway Patrol, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, and the Florida State Guard had entered into agreements to help U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement round up migrants.
The latest piece of the anti-immigration dragnet occurred on Tuesday, July 1, when DeSantis officially opened a migrant detention center at little-used airport, deep in the Everglades, slated to house as many as 5,000 migrants awaiting deportation, DeSantis and Trump administration officials told CNN.
Meanwhile, the MAGA Republican Project 2025 blueprint in Florida and nationally is forcing people to choose between paying rent and buying medicines; between purchasing groceries and paying back their student loans. All these leaders are doing, per the authoritarian playbook, is stoking fear among Floridians and Americans about a fake enemy while pursuing health, environmental, and other policies that make people weaker and easier to dominate and oppress.
When President Donald Trump visited the detention center, he gave DeSantis the pat on the head the governor so deeply craves.
Consternation
Establishment of this concentration camp has caused consternation among critics including environmental activists, civil and human rights advocates, immigration supporters, and members of the Miccosukee and Seminole tribes. Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit before Florida officials opened the facility.
“This site is more than 96% wetlands, surrounded by the Big Cypress National Preserve, and is habitat for the endangered Florida panther and other iconic species,” Friends of the Everglades executive director Eve Samples said in a news release. “This scheme is not only cruel, it threatens the Everglades ecosystem that state and federal taxpayers have spent billions to protect.”
The lawsuit names several federal and state agencies as defendants, including the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Florida Division of Emergency Management.
The two groups claim in the lawsuit that the division holds no independent authority to construct and manage a correctional facility and that attempting to do so exceeds the scope of authority granted by Florida law.
They also contend “the installation of housing units, construction of sanitation and food services system, industrial high-intensity lighting infrastructure, diesel power generators, substantial fill material altering the natural terrain, and provision of transportation logistics (including apparent planned use of the runway to receive and deport detainees) poses clear environmental impacts” to listed species, wetlands, and surface waters.
Melissa Abdo, regional director of the National Parks Conservation Association Sun Coast, outlined the danger to the fragile wetlands:
“Building a bare-bones tented detention center on hot tarmac in the middle of the Everglades and exposing imprisoned immigrants to the elements is a cruel and absurd proposal,” she said. “The Everglades’ intense heat, humidity, and storms can be hazardous without proper precautions. This facility’s remote, harsh nature could leave people in very real danger, especially as Florida’s heat index skyrockets and hurricane season escalates.
“Development of this scale at this location would require massive changes to an ecologically delicate landscape, including running huge generators, trucking in massive amounts of food and water and trucking out waste. Endangered wildlife, iconic national parks, and Florida’s fresh drinking water supply would be at risk from this ill-conceived plan. Communities and villages that live in the area, as well as the people detained and working at this facility, could all be at serious risk if the need arose to quickly evacuate from a hurricane, using only a single two-lane highway that’s currently under construction.”
Grotesque acts of cruelty
DeSantis, Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and immigration arch-villain Steven Miller are positively gleeful as they orchestrate these grotesque acts of cruelty.
Just in case you’re unaware of the shamelessness we’re dealing with, consider that the Republican Party of Florida is selling “Alligator Alcatraz” merchandise, hats, T-shirts, and other gear.
The White House is unconcerned about the dehumanization of human beings, the optics, or the fact that fewer than 10% of those who have been kidnapped by ICE have committed serious crimes. They love the “cartoonish imagery of a draconian outpost in a wilderness patrolled by razor-toothed reptiles and venomous snakes.”
“The only way out is a one-way flight. It is isolated and surrounded by dangerous wildlife and unforgiving terrain,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday. “When you have illegal murderers and rapists and heinous criminals in a detention facility surrounded by alligators, yes, I do think that’s a deterrent for them to try to escape.”
Of course, DeSantis’ spokesman said the governor plans to oppose the lawsuit in court.
“Governor Ron DeSantis has insisted that Florida will be a force multiplier for federal immigration enforcement, and this facility is a necessary staging operation for mass deportations located at a pre-existing airport that will have no impact on the surrounding environment,” said Bryan Griffin in an email. “We look forward to litigating this case.”
Author and MSNBC contributor Brian Tyler Cohen captured the absurdity in a recent Facebook post: “Alligator Alcatraz was built in eight days. It took just over a week to create a massive concentration camp. Remember that the next time those in power claim they can’t house the homeless, feed the starving or provide medical care for the poor. They can. They just don’t want to.”
DeSantis leveraged emergency powers to seize the land the concentration camp sits on and fast-tracked the project under the pretext of attempting to stem “a crisis of illegal immigration.” An executive order allowed the state to award no-bid contracts and begin construction despite the strenuous objections from Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava and local activists.
Amazingly, DeSantis has launched the project during hurricane season, planning on siphoning off $450 million in FEMA money that’s supposed to pay for assistance to residents and handle any potential damage caused by hurricanes during what experts expect to be a busy hurricane season. However, DHS has said in court papers that it neither funded nor authorized the detention center.
Trump has expressed his desire to open these camps around the country, while DeSantis official told CNN in a statement that another site at the Camp Blanding National Guard training center in northeast Florida is also in the works.
Lost in the lies and demonization is that the undocumented are often escaping poverty, political upheaval, gangs, and other challenges in their home countries. All they want is a chance to live their lives, take care of themselves and their families, and be left alone. Instead, they have become political footballs in the cynical political calculus of racist xenophobes like DeSantis, Trump, and Miller.
“When we talk about people as if they’re vermin … The location, the manner in which it’s done, the dehumanizing language … there’s nothing about this detention camp that is not cruel and inhumane,” said Thomas Kennedy of the Florida Immigration Coalition in a CNN interview.
