The abandoned Florida airport being turned into ‘Alligator Alcatraz’

The convoy of the tent truck, construction materials and transmission toilets run into a practically abandoned airport on picturesque florida picturesque hidth, UNESCO World Heritage.

But they do not help build the next great tourist attraction of the region.

Instead, they place the foundations for the new migrant detention, called “Alligator Alcatraz”.

The facility, in the middle of Miama’s swamp, proposed state legislators to support US President Donald Trump Deportational Program.

“You don’t have to invest in the perimeter. If people go out, not waiting for them besides Aligator and Piton,” explains the state lawyer, James Uthmeier, in the video, in the video and published on social media.

The new detention center is being built at the place of airport and transition airports in Dade-Collier, about 43 miles (70km) of central Miami, in the middle of Everglades, environmentally important by worn wetlands.

The aelektarje in which will be based in the detention center, is mainly a pilot training deadline surrounded by huge marshes.

In a sip of summer heat, we are moving only a few meters in the compound when, as expected, the carpet in the truck blocked our way.

We hear the sounds coming from the small channel next to the compound. We wonder if the fish, snakes or hundreds of alligators who wander wander the wetland.

Although airstrip belongs to the Miami-Dade County, the decision to turn it into the detention center by derived Republican Governor Ron Desantis, inviting urgent powers to put the flow of undocumented migrants.

The new Center, which will have the capacity to adapt about 1,000 detainees and starts operations in July or August, quickly becomes a controversial symbol of the immigration policy of Trump’s administration.

Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, Desantis suggested that Aligator Alcatraz was built in the middle of the swamp may last.

“We will probably also do something similar to the blind of the camp,” Desantis said, referring to the former American army training over 300 miles north.

He said that the state official “working on it” would have a formal announcement “very, very fast”.

As Trump orders immigration authorities to implement “One biggest mass deportation program in history”, human rights organizations say detention centers will become excessive.

According to data obtained by CBS news, immigration and customs implementation (ICE) has a record 59,000 detainees across the country, 140% above its capacity.

Betty Osceola, a member of the Miccosukee Indian American community, live close to place and recently participated in the protest against the facility.

It doubts that, not to be a temporary site as powers, it will work for months or even for years.

“I have serious concerns about damage to the environment,” Ms. Osceola tells us as we talked past the canal where the alligator swam.

It is also worried about the living conditions that detainees can face in a new facility.

These concerns resonate environmental organizations such as Everglades friends, and human rights organizations in the USA

The American Union of Civil Freedoms (ACLU) of Florida said the BBC proposed facility “is not only cruel and absurd. It is underlined as our immigration system is increasingly used to punish them.”

Even Ice detention centers in populated areas, ACLU said: “Having a well-documented medical neglect history, denial of legal approach and systemal harassment.”

The BBC Mundo contacted the Prosecutor General of Florida, but did not receive an answer.

In Social Media Video, Uthmeier says the project “Efficient” and “low possibility of building a temporary detention facility”.

With “Alcatraz Aligator,” he says, he will be “nowhere to go anywhere to hide”.

Expansion, adjustment or construction of new detention centers is one of the main challenges of Trump administration in the acceleration of deportations.

The Homeland Secretary of Security Christ Noem said in a statement in a statement to the BBC that Florida would get federal funds to establish a new detention center.

“We work on turbo speeds in economical and innovative ways to submit a mandate of the American people for mass deportations of criminal strangers,” she added.

“We will expand the contents and space for bed in just days, thanks to our partnership with Florida.”

Noem says the facility will finance the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which is responsible for disaster coordination.

Daniella Levine Cava, Democratic Mayor of the Miami-Dad County, who owns the land of air, says that she requested information of state bodies.

The mayor “clearly asked several concerns” in connection with the proposed use of the airport, namely about the financing and impact on the environment, her office announced in the BBC statement.

Immigration attacks increased in cities like Los Angeles, surgeries for detainable migrants are so less widespread in Miami Dad and South Florida county.

Many undocumented Latin American like to stay at home, because they are afraid that they were arrested and sent to detention centers, according to the testimonies collected by the BBC Mundo.