EVERGLADES, Florida — President Donald Trump on Tuesday will tour Alligator Alcatraz, a newly completed, federally run immigrant detention facility in the heart of Florida swampland, following hours of constant construction in the lead-up to his arrival.
Dozens of dump trucks were seen on Monday going in and out of the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport in Ochopee, roughly 50 miles west of coastal Miami. Trucks and construction crews rushed to complete the tentlike structures and infrastructure for the new U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention site with less than 24 hours before the commander in chief’s arrival.
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A Secret Service agent stood by the site’s entrance, approving or denying vehicles that attempted to pass through the gated entrance off of Tamiami Trail, a one-lane road that links Miami to the Gulf Coast city of Naples.
The agent was supported by several Florida National Guard members who stood nearby a Humvee.
The normally remote town of fewer than 150 residents was buzzing Monday as vehicles drove on the narrow road along the alligator-infested inlets. Several reporters were on site, with more press and protesters expected Tuesday as Trump shows up to inspect the rush job of building an emergency ICE jail.
Several dozen activists and protesters who oppose the expansion of the regional airport gathered along the road over the weekend with signs calling for the project to end and warning it would negatively affect the environment.
The Washington Examiner reported Sunday evening that Trump would make an appearance at the facility, which was confirmed Monday by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
“President Trump will travel to the great state of Florida to attend the opening of a new illegal alien detention center located at Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, alongside [Homeland Security] Secretary Kristi Noem, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), congressman Byron Donalds, and other state and local leaders,” Leavitt said Monday afternoon during a briefing at the White House.
Leavitt touted the site’s remoteness as a security feature that would deter detained immigrants from attempting to escape from federal custody.
📍I’m in the Everglades, previewing where Trump is slated to arrive Tuesday morning to inspect ICE’s new immigrant detention center at Dade-Collier Airport pic.twitter.com/4aaKDEYGRE
— Anna Giaritelli (@Anna_Giaritelli) June 30, 2025
“There’s only one road leading in, and there is the only way out,” Leavitt said. “It is isolated and surrounded by dangerous wildlife in unforgiving terrain. The facility will have up to 5,000 beds to house, process, and deport criminal illegal aliens. This is an efficient and low-cost way to help carry out the largest mass deportation campaign in American history.”
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, a Republican, proposed the project earlier in June and touted that the tent facility would not require much of a barrier surrounding the site because if immigrants were to escape, “there’s not much waiting for them, other than alligators and pythons.”
DeSantis took executive action in late June, greenlighting an expeditious effort to stand up the soft-sided facilities at the mostly unused airport strip. During remarks Monday celebrating the state’s fiscal 2025-2026 budget, DeSantis said the multipurpose airport and detention center created an “effective way” to increase ICE deportations.
“The federal government can fly right on the runway right there,” DeSantis told reporters at a press conference in Wildwood. “You literally drive them 2,000 feet, put them on a plane, and then they’re gone. It’s very logistically simple.”
As a candidate, Trump promised to carry out the largest-ever deportation operation, but his administration has struggled to achieve such a feat without enough ICE officers or detention space nationwide.
Although DeSantis was an opponent of Trump in the 2024 GOP presidential primary, he has been a supporter of the deportation operation. Earlier this year, DeSantis allowed state and county law enforcement to work directly with ICE to arrest illegal immigrants at a faster rate.
DeSantis has increased his state’s cooperation with this latest move on expediting a detention space in his state.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, previewed Trump’s visit with a press release issued Monday that highlighted how some of the “worst of the worst criminal aliens” have already been arrested in Florida as part of the Trump administration’s plan to go after and deport criminal illegal immigrants.
“Alligator Alcatraz, and other facilities like it, will give us the capability to lock up some of the worst scumbags who entered our country under the previous administration,” Noem said in a statement. “We will expand facilities and bed space in just days thanks to our partnership with Florida. Make America safe again.”
ICE, not state authorities, will run the site.
The property is nearly identical to structures that the Border Patrol erected amid the record-high influx of illegal immigrants who came over the southern border during the Biden administration. The tents are massive in size and include large rooms for families, adult men, and adult women to be housed.
The facility also includes laundry machines, bathrooms and showers, and a dining area.
The DHS listed illegal immigrants arrested by ICE in Florida who had been convicted of homicide, kidnapping, sexual assault of a minor, aggravated assault of a police officer, arson, and support of a foreign terrorist organization. DeSantis estimated on Monday that the state had 50,000 illegal immigrant residents who had been previously ordered by a federal immigration judge to be deported but had not left the country.
DeSantis revealed that the state is also looking at setting up another ICE detention center at Camp Blanding, a Florida National Guard site in northeast Florida.
