Miccosukee Tribe Asks Florida to Halt Plan on 'Alligator Alcatraz'

Miccosukee Tribe Chairman Talbert Cypress expressed his disappointment on Monday after Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced plans to convert an old Everglades airport into an illegal alien detention center, dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz."

In a message on Facebook, Cypress stated that the proposed facility is "immediately adjacent to the Tamiami Trail," adding the area is home to 19 traditional Miccosukee and Seminole villages, as well as the Congressionally authorized Miccosukee Reserved Area and the Miccosukee Water Conservation Area 3-A.

"The Miccosukee Tribe is opposed to the use of our ancestral lands in Big Cypress as a detention facility," Cypress said. "The State would save substantial taxpayer dollars by pursuing its goals at a different location with more existing infrastructure and less environmental and cultural impacts to the Big Cypress and Tribal lands. We are hopeful that the State will change course and allow these lands to continue to be preserved."

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) approved Florida's proposal on Monday, which was once the Miami-Dade Collier Training Facility in Ochopee.

"We are working on cost-effective and innovative ways to deliver on the American people’s mandate for mass deportations," DHS said in a statement. "Alligator Alcatraz will expand facilities and bed space in just days, thanks to our partnership with Florida."

Uthmeirer said "Alligator Alcatraz" could be up and running within 60 days and hold as many as 1,000 criminal aliens.

According to its website, the Miami-Dade Collier Training facility was constructed in the early 1970s as the Everglades Jetport. Originally planned as a replacement for Miami International Airport, the idea was ironically scrapped due to environmental concerns in the late 1970s.

"Rather than Miccosukee homelands being an uninhabited wasteland for alligators and pythons, as some have suggested, the Big Cypress is the Tribe’s traditional homelands," Cypress added. "The landscape has protected the Miccosukee and Seminole people for generations."