By Cameron Henderson
Deep in Florida’s Everglades national park, surrounded by reptile-infested waters, Donald Trump’s immigration officials are busy building a new detention camp.
Trucks carrying dirt and portable generators have streamed onto the deserted airstrip now known as Alligator Alcatraz, some 45 miles from downtown Miami.
“There is only one road. The only way out is a one-way flight,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, declared on Monday.
Mr Trump himself will visit the site on Tuesday, capping a rough few weeks for one of his signature policies and campaign pledges of rounding up and deporting migrants.
There is reason for optimism, however. His radical immigration agenda is already bearing fruit.
Immigration arrests in the US have more than doubled since Mr Trump entered office.
There were 95,617 arrests between 20 Jan and 10 June 2025, according to the latest five-month period covered by the new data from the Data Deportation Project (DDP).
This is compared with 39,473 arrests in the five months preceding the second Trump White House.
ICE made an average of more than 1,1000 arrests per day in early June.
This is compared to a daily average of 300 before Mr Trump returned to Washington, according to the latest period covered by data obtained by the DDP at the University of California, Berkeley.
Despite its evident effectiveness, the president’s deportation drive has not come without challenges.
Efforts to detain migrants at Guantanamo Bay and a detention centre in Texas were thwarted by a slew of lawsuits, while the administration has flip-flopped on the issue of deporting farm and hotel workers amid pressures from industry executives. Not to mention riots that swept the country last month triggered by ICE raids in Los Angeles.
But the decision to forge ahead with Alligator Alcatraz is indicative of Republicans’ unwillingness to waiver on Mr Trump’s flagship election pledge: securing the border.
“When you have the pendulum swing as far as it did under the Biden administration, it’s going to seem radical in comparison,” Simon Hankinson, a border security and immigration fellow at The Heritage Foundation, said of Mr Trump’s policy.
“There will be a PR war waged on social media to try to paint this one way or another, but the bulk of people who voted for Trump expected that he would carry through on his promises to restore order at the southern border.”
In less than a week, Florida officials have ploughed ahead with construction of the 5,000 bed site, made up of heavy-duty tents and trailers, after governor Ron DeSantis wielded emergency powers to fast-track the process.
Notably, the number of immigration arrests of individuals who have no criminal background other than entering the US illegally has increased at a greater rate than those that do.
This can be attributed to Trump’s Executive Order 14159, which removed Obama and Biden-era enforcement priorities that focused ICE resources on violent felons, repeat criminal offenders and potential security threats.
Immigration arrests of individuals who are convicted criminals increased by 73 per cent and those with pending criminal charges more than doubled.
But the arrests of those with no prior criminal history increased fourfold.
Not only have migrant arrests increased in every single state under Mr Trump, they have tripled in 24 of them — nearly half the country. This includes Florida.
Over the weekend, hundreds of protesters converged outside the disused Everglades airstrip, located about 45 miles west of downtown Miami, as a string of trucks carrying dirt and portable generators streamed into the detention centre.
The site, which is expected to cost $450 million a year when fully operational, is the most high-profile attempt to date by Mr DeSantis and James Uthmeier, his attorney general, to establish Florida’s reputation as the state working hardest to enact Mr Trump’s hardline immigration agenda.
“This is going to be a force multiplier, and we are really happy to be working with the federal government to satisfy president Trump’s mandate,” Mr DeSantis told Fox while touring the facility on Friday.
The Florida GOP has quickly cashed in on the controversy surrounding the facility, launching a line of merchandise featuring t-shirts and drinks coolers emblazoned with “Alligator Alcatraz”.
“Surrounded by swamps and pythons, it’s a one-way ticket to regret,” the party wrote in a promotional post on X.
The project has provoked fury among Mr Trump’s opponents.
“They are locking people in a swamp in extreme heat with no clear plan for humane conditions,” Shevrin Jones, a Florida state Senator, told reporters on a call organised by Florida Democrats on Friday.
Environmental groups also sued to block the plan on Friday, arguing it could have devastating consequences for Florida’s wildlife.
The Everglades wetlands are home to several native tribes as well as dozens of threatened species including manatees, American crocodiles, American flamingo and wood storks.
Eve Samples, the executive director of Friends of the Florida Everglades, which is among the groups suing, labelled the proposal “America’s worst idea”.
“The detention centre is being built on a site that’s more than 96 per cent wetlands and surrounded by Big Cypress National Preserve — the nation’s first preserve. It’s also habitat for the endangered Florida panther and other iconic species,” she said.
Despite state officials claiming there is “not much” there other than dangerous reptiles, indigenous leaders have argued that the facility could spoil the land they have called home for thousands of years.
“We live here. Our ancestors fought and died here. They are buried here,” said Talbert Cypress, a Miccosukee tribe Chairman.“The Big Cypress is part of us, and we are a part of it.”
Mr DeSantis’s office dismissed the lawsuit, stating the facility is “necessary” for mass deportations and will have “no impact” on the environment.
The decision to build the site came after a contract to build a vast tent city at the Fort Bliss military base in Texas was scrapped in April, while courts have blocked efforts by the Trump administration to fly illegal migrants to the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba.
The president has repeatedly had efforts to deport migrants stymied by federal judges, such as in the case of Mahmod Khalil, a pro-Palestinian Columbia University activist who walked free from a Louisiana detention centre in June after a district judge ruled his detention was illegal.
Mr Trump has also come under pressure over his hard-line stance on immigration from within his own support base, with agriculture and hospitality executives successfully lobbying for a “temporary pass” to stop workers in their industries from being targeted.
Battles over immigration have reached fever pitch in the past month after an ICE raid triggered riots in cities across the US, causing Mr Trump to deploy 700 active duty marines to put down the protests.
However, the Supreme Court passed a judgment last week limiting individual judge’s authority in granting nationwide injunctions.
The legislative tool has repeatedly been used to stymie the Trump administration, and immigration experts say that the White House may now be granted more freedom to pursue its deportation agenda unchecked.
“This is a massively important decision that will bring about a sea-change in attempts to stop Trump’s policies,” said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst at Migration Policy Institute.
With Mr Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax and spending bill working its way through the Senate, billions of dollars are expected to be funnelled into deportation efforts, including hiring immigration judges and ICE officers, and paying for detention centres and deportation flights.
Mr Hankinson said: “The gloves have come off and they are able now do the job they were hired to do. The more resources [ICE] gets, they will be able to do that on a larger scale.”