Trump Visits 'Alligator Alcatraz'

President Trump, joined by officials including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, toured the newly built "Alligator Alcatraz" migrant detention facility in Florida on Tuesday—and suggested it could end up as part of a network of similar facilities. "Well, I think we would like to see them in many states. Really, many states," Trump said, per ABC News. "And, you know, at some point, they might morph into a system."

• Trump praised Florida officials for getting the facility ready in just eight days, WFLA reports. "Very soon this facility will house some of the most menacing migrants, some of the most vicious people on the planet," the president said. "We're surrounded by miles of treacherous swampland and the only way out is, really, deportation." DeSantis said operations would begin as soon as the president departed, with the facility set to hold around 3,000 detainees.

• The compound at Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport in the Everglades, around 50 miles west of Miami, consists of tents, trailers and temporary buildings, the AP reports. "You don't always have land so beautiful and so secure," Trump said. "You have a lot of bodyguards and a lot of cops that are in the form of alligators. You don't have to pay them so much." He joked about teaching detainees to run in a zigzag manner to improve their chances by "about 1%" if they escape and have to run away from an alligator.
• Critics of the project include Bacardi Jackson, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, the Miami Herald reports. In a statement Tuesday, Jackson said the branding of the facility "reflects an intent to portray people fleeing hardship and trying to build a better life for themselves and their families as threats, which is both unnecessary and abusive."
• The area is home to endangered species. Elise Pautler Bennett, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, described it as the "most sensitive" place in the state, the BBC reports. "Any other project that would have been proposed in the Everglades would have gone through an intense environmental approval process," she said. "I'm convinced this one didn't get that because it's a political stunt."