Inset: President Donald Trump speaking to reporters at Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport in Ochopee, Fla., during his visit to the newly established immigration detention facility known as “Alligator Alcatraz” on Tuesday, July 9, 2025 (WTTG/YouTube). Background: The new immigration detention center called “Alligator Alcatraz” located at Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport in Ochopee, Fla. (WFOR/YouTube).
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump addressed immigrants contemplating escape from the recently constructed ICE detention center in the Florida Everglades, famously labeled “Alligator Alcatraz” by Governor Ron DeSantis and Homeland Security officials, as he got ready to tour the temporary jail setup.
“This isn’t a pleasant task,” Trump remarked to the press as he departed the White House heading for Florida. “We’re planning to instruct them [immigrants] on how to elude alligators… should they break out of confinement,” he commented. “Here’s the tip: if you want to evade an alligator, don’t sprint straight, move in a pattern like this [demonstrates a zig-zag motion with his hands]. You know what? It slightly increases your odds of success by about 1%.”
Chuckling, Trump added, “Not a good day.”
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Located in Ochopee, about 55 miles west of Miami, the new “Alligator Alcatraz” center has been set up at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport on an airstrip. It is slated to house undocumented immigrants who have been taken into custody by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement under deportation orders from DHS.
Coming soon! pic.twitter.com/v3DCJsrDwV
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) June 28, 2025
Trump touched down in Ochopee on Tuesday at around 11 a.m., along with DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, and met DeSantis on the tarmac before preparing to tour the detention facility.
“We will have a lot of people who will deport on their own because they don’t want to end up in ‘Alligator Alcatraz,'” DeSantis told reporters.
Footage compiled by local media outlets, including local CBS affiliate WFOR, shows how the detention center is composed of tents and trailers — normally used in times of a natural disaster crisis — with bunk beds inside behind chain-link fencing.
“People don’t have to come here,” Noem told reporters while inside one of the tents with Trump and DeSantis. “They can self-deport.”
Noem’s comments are similar to those made by other supportive officials and politicians when asked about the dangers that “Alligator Alcatraz” poses, since it’s located in an area prone to the Everglades’ harsh elements, including heat waves and hurricanes.
“They can’t get stuck in a hurricane if they self deport,” wrote Bill Helmich, executive director of the Republican Party of Florida, on X Monday.
DeSantis told reporters last week at a press conference that it was ultimately the Trump administration that spearheaded the facility’s creation, but Florida was fully on board.
“We had a request from the federal government to do it, and so ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ it is,” DeSantis said, according to CNN. “Clearly from a security perspective, if someone escapes, there’s a lot of alligators you’re going to have to contend [with],” he added. “No one is going anywhere once you do that.”
