Everglades

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz was given the chance to tour the controversial Immigration Detention Center in the heart of The Everglades. She has introduced legislation to defund the facility.

In a matter of eight days, The State of Florida took a barely used Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport and transformed it into the Immigration Detention Center known as “Alligator Alcatraz.”

When reports of inhuman conditions at the Everglades Immigration Detention Center were revealed, Rep. Maxwell Frost was one of several congressional leaders who demanded access to inspect the facility.

DeSantis assured Alligator Alcatraz would have zero impact on the Everglades. However, light pollution and additional construction on the site has led to multiple lawsuits to shut the facility down.

Lawyers seeking a temporary restraining order against an immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades say that “Alligator Alcatraz” detainees have been barred from meeting attorneys. They also say that the detainees are being held without any charges and that federal immigration courts have canceled bond hearings. A virtual hearing in federal court in Miami was held Monday over the lawsuit. Critics have condemned the facility as a cruel and inhumane threat to detainees, while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Republican state officials have defended it as part of the state’s aggressive push to support President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

State and federal lawmakers got a glimpse Saturday inside the controversial and hastily built detention center in the middle of the Everglades. And depending on who you ask, the conditions of the so-called Alligator Alcatraz are comforting like home, or flat out appalling.

A Florida political contingency greeted President Donald Trump as he landed in the state’s new Immigration Detention Facility, known as Alligator Alcatraz.

Controversy comes to the swamps of the Everglades after The State of Florida commandeered a defunct airfield and morphs it into an Immigration Detention Center.

Several conservation-related organizations gathered in the Everglades Sunday morning to protest a state-proposed plan to place an immigration detention facility at the former Everglades Jetport inside Big Cypress National Preserve.The proposal, made recently by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier and dubbed by him as the Alligator Alcatraz, would convert the abandoned jetport into a detention center for immigrants with criminal records.

A new report from The Everglades Foundation found the River of Grass will generate more than $1 trillion for Florida’s economy during the next half-century.