US builds 'Alligator Alcatraz' for 'criminal aliens'

Detention centre to cost roughly $450m per year to operate

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Florida began construction this week on a detention centre surrounded by fierce reptiles and cypress swamps, an “Alligator Alcatraz” in the Everglades wetlands, as part of US President Donald Trump’s expansion of deportations of undocumented migrants.

The chosen site, an abandoned airfield in the heart of a sprawling network of mangrove forests, imposing marshes and “rivers of grass” that form the conservation area, will house large tents and beds for 1,000 “criminal aliens,” according to state Attorney General James Uthmeier.

The 78-square-kilometre area “presents an efficient, low-cost opportunity to build a temporary detention facility, because you don’t need to invest that much in the perim-eter,” he said recently in a video on X, showing the area and clips of migrant arrests.