By Diane Roberts
Do you think concentration camps are cool?
Does your heart fill with mean-spirited joy at the thought of human beings stuffed into tents and FEMA trailers parked on a disused airstrip in the heart of the Everglades in the middle of a Florida summer?
Do you get off on the idea of alligators and snakes killing people and admire bully capitalism hawking camo beverage coolers, stickers, and T-shirts with grinning reptiles proclaiming, “Nowhere to Run; Nowhere to Hide”?
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier certainly does: He’s raising campaign cash on his own little merch site.
Other paid-up members of the Cruelty is the Point cult do, too.
Celebrating the erection of Florida’s own gulag, known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” the state Republican Party bosses trilled, “Don’t forget to pick up your swag to support our efforts to undo all of Joe Biden’s failures!”
We are ruled by sociopaths.
This prison, parked in the middle of Big Cypress National Preserve, has already received hundreds of detainees, packed into rough-and-ready structures that have not had to meet any building or environmental codes and may not be able to withstand a tropical storm.
Cult leaders can’t decide if the place is Devil’s Island or a charmingly rustic resort.
Showing Donald Trump around the place, Ron DeSantis pointed to the razor wire, iron bunk beds, and bright new Astroturf on the ground.
The first batch of detainees don’t seem especially grateful. Those who’ve managed to make a phone call to the outside world say the guards have served them maggot-laced food, refused them medical attention, kept bright lights on all night, and either crank up the air conditioning until the detainees freeze or cut it off and let them swelter.
One alleged foreign malefactor says guards confiscated his Bible.
Gators in ICE caps
Trump loves this. He fantasizes about terrified detainees chased by Burmese pythons and “cops that are in the form of alligators.”
The White House has put out a Trump meme with a gaggle of gators in ICE caps.
The Trump administration is proud of this latest monument to hatred and gets very upset if anyone criticizes it.
Stephen Miller, architect of Trump’s immigration policy, flew into a tantrum the other day when a reporter told him inhabitants of the human world were calling the South Florida stalag “dehumanizing.”
“American citizens are stripped of their rights and their liberties by the invasion of illegal aliens!” he replied. “What’s ‘dehumanizing’ is when Democrats let illegal alien rapists into the country to attack our children. That is ‘dehumanizing’!”
He failed to explain exactly how people fleeing murderous dictatorships in Venezuela, El Salvador, and Nicaragua take rights and liberties from citizens.
As for those hideous assaults alleged by Miller, American citizens commit far more crimes than undocumented immigrants.
The administration knows this. Until a few weeks ago, a Department of Justice website contained information confirming it.
Attorney General Pam Bondi shut down the website for “review” in “accordance with recent Executive Orders and related guidance.”
Why let data get in the way of propaganda?
‘Not safe’
Miller, Trump, and DeSantis insist the people ICE rounds up are “the worst of the worst, the most heinous of the most heinous.”
Again, the data show this is not true. Only 8% of undocumented detainees have been convicted of violent crimes.
This country is still — nominally — a nation of laws, and everyone thrown into an ICE dungeon is entitled to due process.
Even our supine Supreme Court agrees.
But Florida’s tropical tent prison makes it nearly impossible for detainees to consult with attorneys, meaning they could be deported without fair hearings.
A group of lawmakers, including Rep. Anna Eskamani and Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith, tried to visit the facility a couple of weeks ago. Inmates from the Orange County jail — which is in Eskamani’s and Smith’s districts — had been transferred there without being charged with anything.
Legislators pointed out Florida Statute 944.23 allows them to visit state facilities “at their pleasure.”
But DeSantis’ people insist the Everglades prison camp is not technically a state facility, not under the jurisdiction of the Department of Corrections.
Even though the state of Florida’s paying for it.
‘Emergency’ powers
Actually, the Trump administration admits it’s a state facility.
In a filing asking a federal judge to deny a request by Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biodiversity to halt construction in Big Cypress, the administration argues the plaintiffs’ claim depends on showing a final federal “agency action,” which they can’t because the feds haven’t “implemented, authorized, directed or funded Florida’s temporary detention center.”
Indeed, they insist, “Florida is constructing and operating the facility using state funds on state lands.”
DeSantis, Uthmeier, and Pam Bondi need to get their stories straight.
By last Saturday, legal problems had been overcome and the gulag had miraculously become “safe.”
A group of legislators got a curated tour, during which what you saw depended on who you were—and whether you gave a damn about the human beings locked up in there.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Florida) took a thermometer with her, reporting an indoor temperature of at least 83 degrees.
Another Democratic lawmaker said some detainees were shackled to benches.
Republican state Sen. Blaise Ingoglia insisted it’s pretty nice: “I actually laid down in one of the beds and it was really comfortable.”
Sure. And everybody’s talked to a lawyer, there are no mosquitoes, and tropical storms? No problem!
Meanwhile back in reality, DeSantis’ vanity project has already flooded at least once.
Big Cypress is 96% wetlands. It’s wetlands’ job to flood.
When Ron DeSantis, claiming “emergency” powers, seized 39 square miles of Everglades land (nearly 25,000 acres) he claimed, “The environmental impact will be zero.”
DeSantis and the attorney general contend they’re merely taking over what Uthmeier calls “an old, virtually abandoned” airstrip.”
That airstrip is abandoned for a reason. It’s a relic of one of the most boneheaded ideas anyone in Florida ever had.
The Phoenix’s own Craig Pittman recently recounted how in 1968 a really stupid plan to build a huge airport in the Everglades galvanized support for preserving Florida’s River of Grass.
Fun fact: It was Florida’s then-Gov. Claude Kirk and his top aide Nathaniel Reed — who went on to help pass the Clean Water Act in 1972 and co-write the Endangered Species Act in 1973 — who led the fight to save Big Cypress.
Both were Republicans.
Vandals
Back then, some conservatives wanted to conserve, not destroy.
DeSantis and Uthmeier belong to a new generation of environmental vandals.
They want us to believe Big Cypress is wasted space with a few snakes, some bugs, a cadre of demonic alligators programmed to chase brown folks.
Inconsequential. Nothing to see there.
The ignorance is embarrassing.
To the Miccosukee and the Seminoles, the land is holy: “We live here. Our ancestors fought and died here. They are buried here,” said one tribal leader. “The Big Cypress is part of us, and we are a part of it.”
The land is not empty, or “abandoned.”
Manatees and dolphins give birth to their young in the estuaries on the eastern side. Mullet, trout, grouper, silver perch, spiny lobster, oysters, and clams thrive amongst the mangrove roots.
The mangrove branches harbor herons, pelicans, and egrets; there are red cockaded woodpeckers, fox squirrels, and Florida panthers in the pinelands, and some of the world’s rarest orchids in the cypress swamps.
The land is a vital ecosystem for plants and animals and humans, too. Its water flows are essential to the aquifer on which South Floridians depend for their drinking water.
DeSantis likes to cast himself as the savior of the River of Grass and waxes petulant if you suggest his pet prison will damage the ecosystem: “I’m the governor who’s poured more money into Everglades restoration than anyone!”
And now he’s poured more money into Everglades destruction than anyone.
The camp will cost $450 million a year to run.
Don’t be gaslit
Don’t let the man gaslight you: Claims they’re not desecrating Big Cypress are complete rubbish.
Friends of the Everglades has aerial photographs showing the building of new roads and paving once-wild areas.
Runoff from asphalt pollutes. The huge trucks lumbering in and out of the site, carrying construction materials, also pollute.
You can’t house and feed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people, without terrible damage to already fragile nature.
They’ll need pesticides to keep the Everglades’ vigorous mosquitoes at bay; they’ll need generators and microwaves and machinery to pump out the sewage.
The gulag is even sullying the night sky.
One of the lawsuits filed by conservation groups points out the huge prison lights make the place “look like Yankee Stadium, visible from 15-miles away.”
Big Cypress has been designated an International Dark Sky Place. You used to be able to see the Milky Way arching over the marshes and hammocks like a necklace of diamonds and pearls.
Trumpists probably don’t look up at the heavens. They don’t look down at the wonders of the earth.
So why would they care if one of Florida’s greatest treasures gets trashed?
Diane Roberts is an 8th-generation Floridian, born and bred in Tallahassee. Educated at Florida State University and Oxford University in England, she has been writing for newspapers since 1983, when she began producing columns on the legislature for the Florida Flambeau. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Times of London, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Oxford American, and Flamingo. She has been a member of the Editorial Board of the St. Petersburg Times–back when that was the Tampa Bay Times’s name–and a long-time columnist for the paper in both its iterations. She was a commentator on NPR for 22 years and continues to contribute radio essays and opinion pieces to the BBC. Roberts is also the author of four books.
Dennis C Rathsam says
Once again Ms Roberts, one womans opinion is all wet. Maybe she should go python hunting with the Landres, & Pickel. They catch these univited preditors to the everglades. Now to the nitty gritty! The folks in Alligator Alcatraz belong there. They are invaders to our sovern country! They broke our nations law, PERIOD! This mess is caused by her hero Joe Biden. Everyone in that detension center has the option to self deport, & get a $1000 dollars, from the TRUMP government, so stop the gator tears, unless their criminals, which so many are. Bidens invaders have caused enough problems here. He should be charged with treason! Now since it opened, how many invaderes tryed to escape? ZERO!!!! ZIPPOLA!!!!! I guess it works well! Ms Dianne I suggest you help whats left of the democratic party, with there 19% appruval rating. Maybe you should find a leader for your party thats not a socialist/ communist! You must be sick of all TRUMPS wins, over & over again. You see this is what a real president does, he helps the people. Promises made promises kept! Not the destorted lies & cover ups of a once great party.
Rick G says
The Rs have a sick and depraved aura about them. Pro life party my ass.
Land of no turn signals says says
Need one of those T- shirts.
ieHayRide says
Who writes this stuff, fearmongers that believe the world will end.
Nice work
RepublicansAre says
Nuremberg trials for these traitors won’t be near as nice and civil as it was for the original Nazis.
Late stage capitalism says
I say let’s make it republicans retirement home! Once they are declared terrorist let’s send them there to retire!
JimboXYZ says
Well for now, it’s happening, like Biden-Harris growth. Miami-Dade has been stretching the UDB (Urban Development Boundary) for decades. The pollution from the asphalt ? The detainment facility is off the Tamiami Trail which has been paved from Atlantic to Gulf Coast for decades since 1928. Diane Roberts wanted to grow (develop) FL under Biden-Harris and now she’s against it ? Solar Farms are OK, just as long as Roberts approves of the reasons ? I used to drive the Tamiami Trail (as recently as 2015-2016) West of Miami, it’s a swamp, acres of land with dead or no trees on it from past hurricanes & even a lame attempt at wetland management. The size of the detention facility isn’t even as much land as what Alfin approved off Royal Palms Parkway ? Go ahead, link below, do a Google Street view for yourself. If they can build residential housing out that far from West Miami, why not a detention facility ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamiami_Trail
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tamiami+Trl,+Florida/@25.7610208,-80.5140854,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x88da201a6714b795:0x94ae643c8bfcbeaa!8m2!3d25.761016!4d-80.5092145!16zL20vMDNnd196?authuser=0&entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDcxNi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
Laurel says
Miller, Trump, Vance, Uthmeier, DeSantis, and Bondi, are “the worst of the worst, the most heinous of the most heinous.” They are the law ignoring *people* who are incredibly immature, and should have their abusing power immediately removed. There’s your “waste and fraud.” There’s your “swamp” polluting the Everglades. There’s your sociopaths running our government while selling their merchandise, filling their own pockets.
Disgusting!
Those of you buying this ignorant merchandise, are showing a lack of intelligence, and a lack of common decency. Go ahead, show it off, so we know what you are. Your choice.
Marlee says
The camp will cost $450 million a year to run?????
I guess that is why they are defunding NOAA and the Dept of Education and Social Security etc etc etc!
melly says
Cry me a river….
Dusty says
Boo hoo, poor things, that mean old orange man bad. Look it up. Look it up. You liberals are so funny. Stop ruining things that work. This is a deterrent just like chain gangs were a deterrent. Cruel? Absolutely cruel but we don’t want them coming back. I am weary of hearing that someone was assaulted, killed, or robbed by someone else that has been arrested 27 times or deported three times.
Jake from state farm says
@ Marlee – In February 2025, one month alone , New York City received approximately $59 million in one tranche as reimbursement under SSP. About $19 million of that went toward hotel costs; the rest supported services such as security, food, and non-hotel shelter expense. THAT IS NEW YORK ALONE in one month. Makes that $450 million a year pretty attractive.
Ian says
If you weren’t a pedophile wouldn’t you release all the information to show that you’re not a pedophile? ……vote republican to protect pedophiles and deport people of color with no criminal record!!!
Terrance says
Conservatives are morons! How anyone supports orange felon pedophile is beyond me. He is a domestic terrorist enriching himself. It’s sick and we’re all going to pay a huge price for this evil shit he doing.
Bob Croce says
It’s to fancy for them illegals it’s much better living from where they all came from. And don’t you see the crime and killings that is going on in this country from the illegals. Get them out of America ASAP. AND Pierre all you do is bad mouth this country. I guess you rather have all the traitors running the country like the Biden Obama crime family who probably will all go to jail. . And really if you hate it here and our government then maybe you should go back to your home country. It’s Not likely you have it to good here. I doubt you will post this PS. My 1st amendment right 🇺🇸MAGA 🇺🇸
Will says
My god, the education of these younger generations is scary! They have no idea what a concentration camp really is, no idea of the starvation and death that was inevitable! All these detention facilities are 3 square meals, game rooms, lawyer access, computers and leisure time – all for free! Even our own prisons charge a daily fee to American prisoners.
For all you that keep spewing how this administration is lawless and breaking it all the time – oddly you never are able to show any facts ever. Never a single statute that you can point to that will uphold your statements. But, I can list a dozen federal immigration laws that were broken by the Biden administration directly and on purpose!
No, I’m not a Trumpster, just a properly educated American who can think for themselves and doesn’t blindly follow trash stories and false news propaganda! Wake up people before your country is gone forever!
DoubleGator says
I await with anticipation which named storm will blow this make believe tent prison to Tallahassee depositing where it belongs.
Laurel says
So, Republicans, and Republicans only, tell me why it’s okay to protect the President of the United States of America, who recently, hung out with a child trafficking pedophile, and never turned him in? You’re good with pedophiles now? Please explain. I only want to hear from Republicans, who still approve of Trump’s behavior. Often, y’all don’t respond to my questions. I know you’re here. Are you chicken? 🐓🐔🐓🐣🐤🐥Are you now the Pedophile Party?
Just say'n says
If your trigerd buy everything everything is triggering.
K says
Where can I get the shirt? 🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼
Priorities says
So the human traffickers on Epstein’s list deserve to be covered for and protected, but immigrants whose only crime is answering the call of our own Statue of Liberty and coming to this great nation for a better life deserve this unique level of cruelty? We have some seriously messed up priorities in this country’s leadership right now!
Laurel says
Will: You state that you are “educated”. By whom? There have been many, many posts here, by people like Sherry, Pogo, Tony Mack, and Ray W., All with substantial, verifiable facts, which clearly, you have not read. Instead there are Trump supporter “likers” of those, like Bob Croce, whose inability to let go of the unsubstantiated, unverifiable misinformation such as the “Biden Obama crime family.” Where are those *facts*? I never see any here, that I can look up and verify. What I see is talking points from far right, biased shows, and podcast influencers, that make money off you each time you return to their programs, so they keep filling your heads with absolutely bizarre messaging. These talking points are almost always verbatim, with no backup, which makes them obvious and predictable.
Y’all are writing what you want reality to be, not what it is, which is an interesting mind set, which is also known as a cult.
If a man, who becomes President of the United States of America, who spent many years hanging around, and joking with, a child sex trafficker, and abuser, and never reported him, and his child recruiter, and you continue to support him, you are complicit.
What I just wrote about Trump is a verifiable fact.
Sherry says
@bob croce et al Maga cult members. You may “currently” have your second amendment right to free speech, but Pierre Triston is NOT required to publish the hate filled garbage you have posted on here Flaglerlive. If this is what goes around in your head on a daily basis, please seek the counseling you so obviously need as soon as possible.
If you desire any credibility at all beyond the other Maga haters, please respect the others who comment here enough to do your research and present your reasonable “thoughts” based on credible facts. Otherwise, your influence will be extremely limited and those of us who still live in “fact based” reality, with our critical thinking ability intact, will merely dismiss your future comments out of hand.
Sherry says
@melly. . . your mother, would she be proud of your horrific inhumanity?
Ed P says
Well, I certainly know what the left doesn’t like. There isn’t any communication problems when it comes to voicing the negative response to each and everything Trump. If it’s not a communication problem with the American public, is it a policy problem?
What exactly does the left stand for?
Unbalanced trade programs where foreign partners are allowed to steal proprietary and intellectual properties? Trading partners who won’t allow American products like automobiles into their markets? Is the left for sanctuary cities and states that encourage the 600,000+- criminal illegals to cohabitate and prey upon citizens in the sanctuaries? How does the left propose to round these people up since ICE are gestapo like and the sanctuary authorities won’t cooperate. What to do? How would you solve?
Was the left in favor of open border? Men/boys in women/girls sports? Did the 80 billion supposedly spent by Transportation Secretary Buttigieg on DEI make the traveling Americans safer? I know, it’s a lie. Does the left support democratic lie laundering now? Is there any shred of truth to the Biden cover up and auto pen abuse? Nothing there, move on. Can there be any truth to DNI Gabbard’s claims? No? Only republicans propagate conspiracy theories? She’s a nut job. Really? An Epstein list must exist too! Every charge from the left is looked at through a conspiracy prism. The Russia collusion is just one example. You’ve told me that Trump is not a king! Personally, I knew that, as well as everyone else in the world, but is because no one knew what an oligarch was?
What about the 65,000 calls to the emergency hot line for unaccompanied minors that were placed/sponsored with families? They went unanswered.
Remind me again, how many unaccompanied minors did the last administration lose track of? How many has this administration found and saved?
Revelation after revelation like layers of an onion are being revealed and yet the Dems just want to look forward.
In summary, the problem is you are communicating loud and clear, I hear and understand what you hate. Try telling me what your platform actually includes and how it’s good for the country. Let’s start with the easiest problem, how would you solve the national debt? Employees and programs have to be cut, but Dems say no. How then?
Checks and balances says
You see the kindergarten kid get taken by ICE at his kindergarten graduation?! Doesn’t that warm your republican heart ? I know cruelty is the point but kids, even our own kids will suffer through education department dismantling and assistance programs vanishing. Sad and disgusting! Especially at a time when tariffs and republican theft for their oligarchs have made life more unaffordable than ever with plans to get even worse! Haha best part is richest 200 people will get loads more money but millions may go hungry….isnt that beautiful ? Haha rural areas don’t need hospitals and health clinics ! Where’s all the jobs that pay enough to survive? Cerebral Paulsy people need jobs to keep medical care to stay alive, disabled have a hard time with employment so it should be easy for people to find right? System is broken and needs a reboot with a firm boot to the GOP!
Laurel says
Ed P: As an Independent, not a “Dem,” I can see that each of the sides may have a particular focus, but at the very least, those ‘Dems” aren’t relying on a narcissistic, misogynist, bigoted, unempathetic, sociopathic, pedophile supporting, grifter, transactional felon to *improve* the already great country of the United States of America.
Do you yet see?
We are currently under a gross overreach of the government that behaves as if half the country should be suppressed, and that they are “vermin.”
Bad!
Ed P says
Laurel,
What I see is that a reset for our country was necessary. Neither the Dems nor Independents had a candidate able or willing to take on those challenges. A flawed villain or a flawed hero?
It like one’s perception of how long a minute is….depends which side of the bathroom door you’re on.
Laurel says
I suppose the Devil himself would be considered a “flawed hero.”
Fox Entertainment talks to folks about “common sense.” I see no common sense here. You don’t fix a house by blowing it up.
Laurel says
“Alligator Alcatraz” (Alcatraz being a prison) is ignorant, childish and cruel (not to mention it is within a fragile, national park).
Only people like Desantis and Trump would be so stupid, selfish and inhumane.
Laurel says
EdP: By the way, “Independents” are actually referenced “NPA” on our voting cards, which translates to “No Party Affiliation.” The state will not allow us to vote in primaries. We can’t hardly put forth a candidate.
James says
Perhaps it’s just me, but doesn’t this remind anyone else of something… or more precisely someplace?
Abu Ghraib?!?
Not good folks… it could become a ghastly mess.
Just my opinion.