Inset: President Donald Trump speaking to reporters astatine Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport successful Ochopee, Fla., wherever helium was visiting the caller migration detention halfway known arsenic "Alligator Alcatraz" connected Tuesday, July 9, 2025 (WTTG/YouTube). Background: The caller migration detention halfway known arsenic "Alligator Alcatraz" astatine Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport successful Ochopee, Fla. (WFOR/YouTube).
President Donald Trump offered up immoderate proposal Tuesday to immigrants reasoning they tin flight the government's caller ICE detention halfway successful the Florida Everglades, dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz" by Gov. Ron DeSantis and Homeland Security officials, arsenic helium prepared to sojourn the makeshift jailhouse facility.
"This is not a bully business," Trump told reporters portion leaving the White House on Tuesday greeting for the Sunshine State. "We're going to thatch them [immigrants] however to tally distant from an alligator … if they flight prison," the president said. "How to tally away: don't tally successful a consecutive line, tally similar this [gestures hands successful zig-zag motion]. And you cognize what? Your chances spell up astir 1%."
Chuckling, Trump added, "Not a bully day."
Located successful Ochopee, astir 55 miles westbound of Miami, the caller "Alligator Alcatraz" halfway has been acceptable up astatine the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport connected an airstrip. It is slated to location undocumented immigrants who person been taken into custody by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement nether deportation orders from DHS.
Coming soon! pic.twitter.com/v3DCJsrDwV
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) June 28, 2025
Trump touched down successful Ochopee connected Tuesday astatine astir 11 a.m., on with DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, and met DeSantis connected the tarmac earlier preparing to circuit the detention facility.
"We volition person a batch of radical who volition deport connected their ain due to the fact that they don't privation to extremity up successful 'Alligator Alcatraz,'" DeSantis told reporters.
Footage compiled by section media outlets, including section CBS affiliate WFOR, shows however the detention halfway is composed of tents and trailers — usually utilized successful times of a earthy catastrophe situation — with bunk beds wrong down chain-link fencing.
"People don't person to travel here," Noem told reporters portion wrong 1 of the tents with Trump and DeSantis. "They tin self-deport."
Noem's comments are akin to those made by different supportive officials and politicians erstwhile asked astir the dangers that "Alligator Alcatraz" poses, since it's located successful an country prone to the Everglades' harsh elements, including vigor waves and hurricanes.
"They can't get stuck successful a hurricane if they aforesaid deport," wrote Bill Helmich, enforcement manager of the Republican Party of Florida, connected X Monday.
DeSantis told reporters past week astatine a property league that it was yet the Trump medication that spearheaded the facility's creation, but Florida was afloat connected board.
"We had a petition from the national authorities to bash it, and truthful 'Alligator Alcatraz' it is," DeSantis said, according to CNN. "Clearly from a information perspective, if idiosyncratic escapes, there's a batch of alligators you're going to person to contend [with]," helium added. "No 1 is going anyplace erstwhile you bash that."