On June 20, nearly three weeks into the Atlantic hurricane season, Florida disaster-management officials assembled a group of emergency relief contractors in Tallahassee and asked them to do something they had never done before.
Governor Ron DeSantis wanted to construct a camp in the Everglades that could hold thousands of immigrants detained in President Donald Trump’s deportation campaign. To get it built fast, Kevin Guthrie, the head of the state’s emergency-management division, asked the firms to start moving tents, trailers and toilets onto an abandoned airstrip near Miami within days.
The state-run facility, nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz,” was inaugurated with 3,000 beds, with the ability to scale up in the coming weeks and months as needed.
Trump visited the facility on Tuesday with DeSantis and other Florida officials, as well as Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary.
“You have a lot of cops in the form of alligators,” Trump said. “I wouldn’t want to run thro…