Ron DeSantis says ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ critics just want open borders

Gov. Ron DeSantis continues to question the motivations of those opposing “Alligator Alcatraz,” saying the real goal of objections is to thwart the Donald Trump administration’s approach to illegal immigration.

“This is something that’s already built. Now, there’s different things that are being added to the airport, but there’s no different footprint at all. So it has nothing to do in terms of Everglades Impact or restoration,” DeSantis said of the facility.

“I think people are just trying to say that because they just don’t want Florida assisting with the deportations. There’s a lot of people that want to have open borders. I get that, but that’s not the policy of the states.”

DeSantis added that “the only reason” the state is getting involved is that the proposal “helps fulfill President Trump’s mission” to “process folks and then remove them from our country.”

He also stressed that the facility will be a temporary way station for suspected undocumented immigrants to be placed before their expatriations.

“They will process and then remove,” DeSantis said of the feds.

“We’ll keep that cadence going if it works. What I’m not going to do is just us being to house and feed indefinitely, just for the sake of doing that. I have no interest in doing that. I don’t think Floridians want us to be doing that. I don’t think that’s what the federal government’s policy is. I don’t think that’s what they want us to do. I think they want to effectuate the removals.”

DeSantis made the comments at the Schmidt Family Complex for Academic and Athletic Excellence in Boca Raton.

Alligator Alcatraz hasn’t been completed yet, but it’s coming to the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport on the edge of the Everglades National Park.

At least some critics of the proposal who oppose restrictions on illegal immigration have taken this position that the concept is flawed morally, though they haven’t said it’s because they want “open borders” per se.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost of Orlando said the federal government and associated parties in the illegal immigration detention enterprise “intend to use the power of government to kidnap, brutalize, starve, and harm every single immigrant they can — because they have a deep disdain for immigrants and are using them to scapegoat the serious issues facing working people.”

Democratic state Rep. Angie Nixon of Jacksonville called the proposal “horrendous.”

Others, such as the Friends of the Everglades, said the proposal is a “vital threat” to “one of the most fragile ecosystems in the country,” one that “poses an unacceptable and unnecessary risk to on-site wetlands, nearby Big Cypress National Preserve and Everglades National Park.”

Meanwhile, the Sierra Club offered a combination of the two arguments against the “deeply inhumane” proposal that “weaponizes Florida’s natural heritage to dehumanize immigrants.”