Jacob Ogles
Senate Democrats hold legal concerns about Gov. Ron DeSantis’ plans for an ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ detention center in South Florida.
Senate Minority Leader Lori Berman will hold a press conference on Friday, airing questions the minority caucus holds about the state’s plans to convert a publicly owned air strip in the Everglades into a remote facility to aid President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda.
An announcement from the party characterizes the facility as a “makeshift prison camp.” Berman is expected to discuss environmental concerns about the proposal and raise questions about the process the Republican administration has employed to establish the institution rapidly.
DeSantis last week said the use of that facility, as well as those at Camp Blanding, will achieve the goal of doubling beds for detaining migrants from 41,000 to more than 100,000.
“The capacity that will be added there will help the overall national mission,” he said.
But after Attorney General James Uthmeier announced plans for the center, environmentalists immediately pushed back.
“This proposal just flies in the face of the public support for environmental protection,” Allie Hartmann, communications director for Friends of the Everglades, told ABC News.
American Indian tribes based in the region also have banded together to oppose the project.
“The Miccosukee Tribe is opposed to the use of our ancestral lands in Big Cypress as a detention facility,” said Miccosukee Chair Talbert Cypress wrote in a statement. “The State would save substantial taxpayer dollars by pursuing its goals at a different location with more existing infrastructure and less environmental and cultural impacts to the Big Cypress and Tribal lands. We are hopeful the state will change course and allow these lands to continue to be preserved.”
U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost, a Democrat from Orlando, has also criticized the plan.
“Donald Trump, his Administration, and his enablers have made one thing brutally clear: they 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,” Frost said.
“They would rather us point fingers at immigrants for the housing crisis, violence, lack of healthcare, and high costs that plague our nation rather than blame the inaction of politicians and greedy corporations.”
