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Alligator Alcatraz--or Alligator Auschwitz?

Submitted by Robin Messing on Thu, 07/17/2025 - 5:25pm

What Is Alligator Alcatraz and Who Will Be Sent There?

Take a look at the video in this post. It is the inside of a tent of Alligator Alcatraz, a concentration camp designed to hold 3,000 undocumented immigrants in the middle of the Everglades while they await deportation. Proponents of this camp delight in the fact that anyone trying to escape the camp is likely to be eaten by an alligator or a python.

 

Who will be sent to this concentration camp? Note that at 0:47 in the following video, Donald Trump says this facility will be used to house some of the most vicious people on the planet, whereas Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem says something quite different. Watch at 1:31 where she says, "People don't have to come here. If they self-deport and go home, they can come back legally. We will let them come back legally."

 

Thus, we are forced to conclude that the Trump Administration will either let the most vicious criminals re-enter the country because they have self-deported and filled out the proper paperwork--or that Trump is lying and that most of those at the facility will not have committed vicious crimes. And there is no way that anyone in the Trump regime will knowingly let the most vicious criminals re-enter our country, so we can only conclude that most of those sent there will be guilty of only minor offenses.

There is another reason to suspect that Trump is lying when he says this camp will be used to house the worst of the worst. The Miami Herald reports:

A 35-page report obtained by the Herald/Times outlining the state’s “initial draft of minimum requirements” for the site shows the level of planning that went into building the facility in an eight-day span. The undated records point to a myriad state and federal regulations the facility had to meet before it could open and suggest that there is a possibility children could be among the detainees who could be sent to the facililty

 

When transporting detainees, for example, the guidelines say “minors shall be separated from unrelated adults at all times during transport and seated in an area near officers and under close supervision.” The records also say “snacks and water shall be given to minors, pregnant females, and as necessary for detainees with medical conditions,” while being transported “by land."

 

Does Alligator Alcatraz Have A Sound Hurricane Evacuation Plan?

Florida is Hurricane country, and as such those responsible for Alligator Alcatraz had damn well better have a sound evacuation plan for when hurricanes inevitably strike. State officials claim that such a plan exists, but they have not released their plan publicly. As far as the public goes, their plan is, "Trust me bro. We're competent and we've got this." And until they actually publish their plans for independent experts to examine, there is no way to know whether they are sound as a whistle or sound as the Titanic's evacuation plan.

We have been told that the facility can withstand a category 2 hurricane. We don't know how long it will take to evacuate the 3,000 prisoners and 1000 staff members. I asked Grok, Twitter's AI engine, "What are the emergency evacuation plans for Alligator Alcatraz in case of a hurricane?" Here is Grok's reply. (Note: I asked Grok this question a couple of days before Elon Musk messed with Grok's algorithm that turned it into mechaHitler.)

 

The emergency evacuation plans for the "Alligator Alcatraz" migrant detention facility in Florida’s Everglades, as outlined by state officials, involve evacuating detainees and staff if a tropical cyclone with winds exceeding the facility’s wind rating is forecasted to impact the area. The facility, constructed in eight days at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, is designed to withstand Category 2 hurricane winds (up to 110 mph), which is significantly less than major hurricanes like Ian (155 mph), Helene (140 mph), or Milton (180 mph) that have recently affected Florida.

 

According to Kevin Guthrie, Executive Director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, the evacuation procedures follow standard protocols used for other state facilities. The state has described the rapid construction of the facility as a “dress rehearsal” for hurricane logistics, indicating preparedness to mobilize resources quickly. However, the formal evacuation plan is still in development, with planning occurring concurrently with site development. The specific relocation sites for evacuees depend on the storm’s projected path and the facility’s population at the time.

Concerns have been raised about the facility’s vulnerability to flooding, even from non-hurricane events. On its opening day, July 1, 2025, a summer rainstorm caused water to seep into the facility, affecting electrical cables and highlighting potential weaknesses in the temporary infrastructure, which consists of tents and trailers. An appraisal noted the site’s proneness to deep flooding, even outside hurricane season, raising questions about the adequacy of current plans.

Molly Best, deputy press secretary for Governor Ron DeSantis, confirmed that evacuation is standard procedure for state facilities under such conditions, but no specific wind rating for the site was provided in public statements. The facility’s reliance on mobile water, sewage, and power systems adds complexity to ensuring safety during severe weather.

In summary, while Florida officials assert they have a hurricane evacuation plan involving standard procedures and potential relocation, the plan remains incomplete, and the facility’s temporary setup poses risks, particularly given the area’s flood-prone nature and the likelihood of an active 2025 hurricane season.

 

In other words, their evacuation plan is underdeveloped and half-assed. I find it hard to believe that they will be able to evacuate 3,000 people in just a few hours--and that is assuming they actually decide to evacuate. They might decide not to evacuate because they are receiving bad hurricane predictions due to DOGE cutting over 500 employees from the National Weather Service. John Morales, a Florida weather forecaster with 34 years' experience, explains just what that means for his ability to predict the path and the strength of hurricanes.

 

 

Unfortunately, job cuts in the National Weather Service is not the only reason why we our ability to predict hurricanes will be reduced. The Defense Department will stop processing and sharing data from their microwave imaging satellites with the National Weather Service at the end of this month. This data is crucial for understanding the structure of hurricanes and how fast they will strengthen. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has claimed that other satellites could provide microwave imaging for the National Weather Service, but Zoë Schlanger explained in The Atlantic why this is misleading.

A few other satellites can provide microwave imaging. But, as the meteorologist Michael Lowry has pointed out, their instruments either are orbiting more infrequently or are inferior to the one being discontinued. NOAA suggested to Lowry that its Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder instrument would be able to fill the gap, he wrote. But that suggestion is misleading, Hazelton said: The information from that satellite is so low-resolution that the eye of a hurricane looks like just a few pixels instead of a more detailed image. “It’s really hard to pick out details,” he told me—including the aspects of a storm’s structure that may signal that it could rapidly intensify. Plus, having fewer microwave instruments operating in the sky means fewer snapshots of oceans where hurricanes might form. Without SSMIS, the number of microwave-image glimpses that forecasters get over any given spot will be essentially cut in half, Lowry wrote; many more hours could go by without observations when they’re most needed. 

This is especially troubling given that the warming of the Atlantic ocean is causing hurricanes to become more powerful more quickly. Forecasters might expect a cat 1 or 2 hurricane to make landfall the day before it hits, but it could surprise them by strengthening to a cat 4 just in just a matter of hours. This is from the Naples Daily News,

What were max winds for three last major hurricanes to affect SWFL?

  • In 2022, Hurricane Ian had top maximum sustained winds of 155 mph, just shy of reaching Category 5 classification, the strongest on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.
  • Hurricane Helene was a major Category 4 hurricane in 2024 with peak winds of 140 mph when it made landfall.
  • After that, Hurricane Milton reached its top intensity on Oct. 7, as a Category 5 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 180 mph.

 

Hurricane Milton strengthened from category 2 to a category 4 in just 4 hours. This is what Milton's growth looked like.

 

And there is another problem with Alligator Alcatraz's evacuation plan. It is unclear whether the facility will be evacuated if officials are expecting a category 1 or 2 storm or whether they will only evacuate if they expect a category 3 storm or higher. There was one report that an unnamed Florida lawmaker said they would not evacuate if they were only expecting a category 1 or 2 storm.  However, Kevin Guthrie, Executive Director for the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said, "We will not wait for a Cat 2. We will follow normal evacuation procedures as we do for any other facility statewide." In any case, basing the evacuation decision on the category of an oncoming hurricane may end up missing the mark. A hurricane's category is based on its wind speed, but torrential rainfall and flooding can sometimes do more damage than the wind, and a storm that hit Alligator Alcatraz within a day of its opening raised questions about its safety.

 

 

Well, at least the contractors who built Alligator Alcatraz have vowed to fix the flooding problem. 

 

And we can be sure that those who screwed up in setting up the tents the first time will get it right the second time because the contractors were chosen for their skill and expertise and not because they had any special political connections. Oh, wait. Rolling Stone reports:

As it turns out, two contractors who worked to quickly build out Alligator Alcatraz, which Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has called a “one-stop shop” for detention, adjudication, and deportation of migrants, have been significant donors to DeSantis and Trump....

 

According to documents reviewed by Bloomberg, the contractors were selected from an existing pool of vendors already approved by Florida’s Division of Emergency Management — a move that allowed the state to bypass competitive bidding requirements. A heavily redacted planning document for the detention center obtained by Bloomberg indicated a desire to petition DHS to waive Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention standards to “streamline the setup of detention facilities.”

“We believe that the nature and vast scope of the illegal alien presence deserves a rethinking of detention processes and standards,” the document said.

 

This wasn't even a major storm. It was just a run-of-the-mill storm that dumped an inch and a half of rain on the facility. Hurricanes often dump 6 - 12 inches of rain, but hurricanes can dump more. Hurricane Jeanne dumped 23 inches of rain in 1980, and Hurricane Ian brought 10 - 20 inches in Central and Eastern Florida in 2022.

 

What Are the Conditions Like In Allegator Alcatraz?

The Eighth Amendment of the Constitution bans cruel and unusual punishment, but recent reports coming out of the prison make it sound like those who are responsible for the prison want to feed the Constitution to an allegator. The Miami Herald interviewed three women whose husbands were being detained at the facility. It is important to note that the women told similar stories about the conditions in the facilities even though they were interviewed separately from one another. Here is what The Herald found.

The calls from Alligator Alcatraz’s first detainees brought distressing news: Toilets that didn’t flush. Temperatures that went from freezing to sweltering. A hospital visit. Giant bugs. And little or no access to showers or toothbrushes, much less confidential calls with attorneys…

 

The women told the Herald that their husbands were unable to shower for several days after arriving. On Sunday, two women said their husbands complained that initially there was no water to flush toilets. All three detainees told their wives that the bugs were getting inside, one of them saying that grasshoppers the size of his hand were springing into the tent and that the biggest mosquitoes he had ever seen were flying over them in their cells.

One detainee sent to Alligator Alcatraz from a Florida jail following a dispute with his ex was bitten on his face by mosquitoes a few times in his sleep, he told his wife on Monday morning. Another detainee, who was arrested for driving without a license three days before arriving at the facility, told his wife he “couldn’t take” the conditions anymore.

A fourth detainee, Cuban reggaeton artist Leamsy Izquierdo told CBS News and other local media outlets that the lights are on inside the facility 24 hours a day, a detail that was corroborated by a Venezuelan detainee’s wife interviewed by the Herald. Izquierdo was transferred to the Everglades site after landing in Miami-Dade’s Turner Guilford Knight Correction Center on assault and battery charges. He has pleaded not guilty.

Inside the facility, detainees say there are no clocks and there is scant sunlight coming through the heavy-duty tents, making it difficult for them to know whether it is day or night.

The temperature is also a cause of concern for some family members.

A Guatemalan detainee told his wife that he was unable to sleep on Monday night due to how cold it was inside the tent. By Tuesday afternoon, the same man told his wife that it appeared the air-conditioner had stopped working and that it was really hot inside, according to a recording of the conversation obtained by the Herald. His wife told the Herald he was detained while he was a passenger during a traffic stop with Florida Highway Patrol.

The Venezuelan man’s wife heard the same thing on Tuesday afternoon. Her husband said the “air is hot” inside the tent. She said he sounded out of breath. It was 96 degrees near Alligator Alcatraz Tuesday afternoon, according to National Weather Service data, with a “feels like” temperature of 105 degrees

 

The Miami Herald says that state officials are claiming these stories are false. So who are we to believe? The wives of the husbands in the prison, or the state officials who are responsible for the prison? There are at least three reasons to believe the state officials are either lying or don't know what is going on in the prison.

  1.  The wives were interviewed separately. Each woman did not know what the others were saying. Yet, their stories broadly matched. Also, what Leamsy Izquierdo told CBS News about the lights being on 24 hours a day was corroborated by a Venezuelan detainee’s wife.
  2. The Herald reports that a detainee suffered a medical emergency and was sent to the hospital. A witness reported seeing an ambulance leave the facility, and a hospital official confirmed that a detainee from the facility arrived at the hospital. Yet a spokesman for Florida Attorney General James Uthemeier told the Herald it was “fake news." After the Miami Herald first published the article online, "a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security acknowledged on the social media site X that the detainee had been sent to the hospital, but said he wasn’t admitted and was returned to the detention center in an hour and a half." This suggests that state officials were either clueless, or they were trying to cover up the fact that someone was sent to the hospital and only admitted that fact after they were called out.
  3. Democratic lawmakers tried to enter Alligator Alcatraz on July 3 to inspect the facility. They were denied entrance allegedly because of safety concerns. Whether that was the real reason why they were denied access or whether those running the facility had other reasons for not wanting Democratic Representatives to look around is anyone's guess. However, another delegation was allowed in on July 12 and they found appalling conditions there. Listen to what Congressman Maxwell Frost had to say about the facility. Note he said one of the prisoners shouted that he was an American citizen. Note also that the air conditioning didn't seem to be working in at least some of the units. This corroborates the Guatemalan refugee who said the air conditioners had stopped working.

 

The South Florida Sun Sentinal reports:

U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz told reporters she saw cages with 32 men per cage, sharing three toilets as part of a unit with a sink, where they also get their drinking water. Inside of the cages was a three-foot “privacy wall.” The showers had no curtains.

 

“They are essentially packed into cages,” she said. “Wall-to-wall humans.”

Wasserman Schultz said she brought a thermometer that recorded temperatures at 85 degrees in some of the tents that were supposed to be air-conditioned. In a dorm that was not yet in use, she saw bugs on the mattresses.

 

And of course, a Florida Republican State Senator practically called these complaints as fake News. This again is from the Sun Sentinal:

Republican State Sen. Blaise Ingoglia said the facility surpassed expectations and the “squalid” conditions reported to the media were not an accurate representation.... Ingoglia painted a different picture of the conditions inside the facility, describing it as “very well run.” He said he lay down on one of the beds and it “was more comfortable than my bed at home, I’m not kidding.

 

I'm calling BULLSHIT on State Senator Ingoglia. He filed papers in 2023 declaring a net worth of over $12 million. And he expects us to believe him when he says that the prison's beds were more comfortable than his own???? Take a look at the closeups of these beds at Alligator Alcatraz between 1:25 - 1:35 of this video and see if you can keep a straight face while saying that they are more comfortable than the bed of a multi-millionaire.

 

Ingoglia is simply trying too hard with his lie, and if he is lying about the state of the prison's beds compared to his own, then there is no reason to believe his testimony over that of the wives of the prisoners and the Democratic representatives who inspected the prison.

There is one more piece of evidence backing the claims made by the prisoners to their wives. All three prisoners told their wives that bugs were getting inside the tent, and at least two of them complained about mosquitos. And it just so happens that the area around the tents is heavily infested with mosquitos. The Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church's news site reports:

Outside, there is an infestation of mosquitoes carrying the potential to transmit deadly diseases....

 

State Rep. Anna Eskamani, a Democrat from Orlando, attempted to investigate what was happening inside the facility. TV station WSVN in Miami reported that officials blocked her, citing security concerns.

However, she quickly discovered one potential hazard there.

"The second you open up your car, your car is infested with mosquitoes," she said....

A media member told a similar story.

"You're probably wondering why I'm wearing a hoodie and a rain jacket, and that's because you can barely walk outside here because of the mosquitoes," NBC6's Hatzel Vela said on Instagram. "Naturally, when you get a lot of rain and puddles of water, that of course breeds a lot of mosquitoes."

 

And Florida State Representative Angie Nixon said that her lips were swelling because she was bitten. She didn't say what type of insect bit her, but we can assume it was a mosquito because she followed up immediately by talking about the need to make sure the prisoners had mosquito spray and covering. Watch what Nixon says starting at 0:50 of this video.

 

Housing prisoners in tents in a mosquito infested area is especially dangerous. The Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church continued their report noting:

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says mosquitoes can transmit the Zika virus, West Nile virus, malaria, dengue, chikungunya, and yellow fever.

 

“The risk of mosquito-borne disease at this site is significant,” Durland Fish, a professor emeritus of epidemiology at the Yale University School of Public Health, told the Washington Post.

He conducted a mosquito study at Big Cypress Swamp, where the detention center is located. He said they can cause neurological damage, including encephalitis, or inflammation of the brain.

 

A Reminder About Who Will Be Imprisoned At Hurricane Alcatraz

Many people would be horrified by these harsh prison conditions and wonder whether they violate the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. But maybe you're not one of them. Maybe you find these conditions acceptable because you believe Donald Trump when he says that Alligator Alcatraz will house the worst of the worst. But we now have new evidence that the facility is being used to house a mixture of really bad people with people whose only crime is being in the country illegally. The Miami Herald reports:

Mixed among the detainees accused and convicted of crimes are more than 250 people who are listed as having only immigration violations but no criminal convictions or pending charges in the United States. The data is based on a list of more than 700 people who are either being held under tents and in chain link cells at Florida’s pop-up detention center in the Everglades or appear slated for transfer there.

 

A third of the detainees have criminal convictions. Their charges range from attempted murder to illegal re-entry to traffic violations. Hundreds of others only have pending charges. The records [obtained by the Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times] do not disclose the nature of the alleged offenses, and reporters have not independently examined each individual’s case.

 

The Herald's report also notes that the records show that the detainees came from 40 different countries, with one being from the United States. Is the same prisoner who yelled out to Congressman Maxwell Frost that he was a U.S. citizen? Is there, in fact, a U.S. citizen being held there, and if so, why? Is there a chance that he will be deported--possibly to a torture prison in El Salvador like Kilmar Abrego Garcia and roughly 200 Venezuelans were deported without due process? What safeguards are in place to prevent Americans from being "accidentally" caught up in an ICE raid and sent to Alligator Alcatraz by "mistake"? 

And perhaps most important of all, why did the initial draft requirements for the facility include information on how to handle minors and pregnant women? Are they serious? Well, I hear that tiny tasty tots make nice bite-size morsels for overweight allegators on a diet.

 

Laura Loomer,  Alligator Alcatraz, and Auschwitz

Laura Loomer may be Trump's closest advisor outside of his Administration. And by closest, I mean that both literally and figuratively, as you will see in this video. And yes--that is Nick Fuentes, an extreme racist Neo-Nazi she is talking to at the start of the video.

 

Anyone who doubts Loomer's influence on Trump should read James Risen's article: Maga influencer and de facto national security adviser Laura Loomer holds outsized sway on Trump. Lovely Laura has something--uh interesting-- to say about Alligator Alcatraz. I can't embed Loomer's tweet in this article because Twitter has limited its visibility, but if you want to see the original, you can do so here.

 

 

Why 65 million? That is the total number of Hispanic people in the United States. Laura Loomer is calling for--or at least joking about--the genocide of an entire race in the U.S. Now, I don't for a second believe that Donald Trump wants to exterminate all Hispanics. And I don't think that is why he supports Alligator Alcatraz. But if I were Hispanic, I would not want Laura Loomer whispering in Trump's ear and influencing his thinking. Remember, Auschwitz did not start out as a death camp. It was originally established as a concentration camp for Polish prisoners in 1940, and it only became an extermination camp in 1942.

Update 7/18/25: I added the words "while they await deportation" to the second sentence of this article to clarify that Alligator Alcatraz is intended to hold prisoners temporarily as they await their deportation hearings and are finally deported.

Recommended Reading: The Young GOPer Behind “Alligator Alcatraz” Is the Dark Future of MAGA by Greg Sargent in The New Republic.

Recommended watching that is tangentially related to this article: Fox News host Greg Gutfield recommends that those who back ICE raids and Alligator Alcatraz call themselves Nazis.