In another massive attack against immigrants, an abandoned Florida airport was turned into the “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration detention facility. In early July, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis pushed through the facility that holds up to 5,000 detainees. Built in just eight days, there are immediate concerns about the detention center’s dangerous conditions.
As soon as it opened, news broke that Alligator Alcatraz prisoners were not allowed to shower for days and were only allowed one maggot-infested meal per day. Prisoners faced broken air conditioning and flooding conditions made worse by the fact that the facility is in the middle of the Everglades, in 90 to 100 degreess Fahrenheit temperatures during hurricane season. After being allowed to look inside the facility, Florida lawmakers described it as crowded, unsanitary, and bug-infested.
These inhumane conditions are aligned with the Trump administration’s aims of growing fear in our communities and scapegoating immigrants, who are described as “criminals.” Alligator Alcatraz, with an expected annual cost of $450 million, is made possible by the “Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which funds $45 billion towards immigration detention centers. The rich are investing billions in border security in hopes of seeing a return in profits as private prison companies have already made over $13 billion in the last decade.
This decades-long crisis is not the sole fault of Republicans, as immigrants were under attack under Democratic administrations. But we can expect violence to grow. At the 2025 Border Security Expo, Todd Lyons, the ICE director, said that his dream for the agency is for trucks to round up immigrants for deportation the same way that Amazon trucks deliver packages.
Detention centers should not exist. They serve the purpose of making huge profits for corporations like Core Civic and Geo Group. They also function to scare immigrants into staying silent when faced with injustice, for detention centers and deportation are always waiting for them if they “step out of line” – a line defined by the bosses and the state. Immigrants are human beings, not pawns to be exploited in a system rigged for the benefit of the wealthy few. To put an end to inhumane conditions like those of Alligator Alcatraz, we need to put an end to the system of capitalism.
