Swamp Thing

Drop the cutesy name and call the Everglades facility what it is: an American concentration camp.

‘Alligator Alcatraz’ sounds like a video game or thrill ride at an amusement park. It was pitched that way in a music thumping, high energy, reality-tv style video with quick edits of people in handcuffs, military hardware, alligators and tough talk: “People get out, there’s not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons. Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.”

But this is anything but a game. It’s an American concentration camp.

This new, pricey prop in Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown is a 5,000 bed migrant detention facility intentionally built in the midst of a swamp in the Florida Everglades filled with alligators, crocodiles, and pythons. What used to be a training airport is now a gulag designed to hold the thousands of people being abducted by masked and heavily armed officers. That includes the moms pulled from their cars, day workers rounded up in Home Depot parking lots, and farm workers seized while picking strawberries. 93% of the people seized by ICE since October 2024 are not violent criminals but instead hard working people, many going through the already arduous process to become American citizens. Many of them will wind up here in the middle of a swamp.

News reports say the hurriedly built compound is now a series of tents ringed in barbed wire and topped with razor wire. Images of the inside show metal cages surrounding rows of bunk beds. Critics say none of it is adequately protected from Florida’s 100-degree weather or the hurricanes threatening to pummel that area over the coming months. Parts of the facility already show signs of flooding after a light rain on Tuesday. Imagine what will happen when a Category 5 hurricane hits.

This new swamp facility - an inhumane, vile operation - is making MAGA giddy.

• The Florida Republican party is selling “Alligator Alcatraz’ swag. “Grab our merch to support tough-on-crime borders! Limited supply- get yours before the gators do!"

• MAGA YouTuber Benny Johnson proudly showed off his alligator merch outside the gates of the facility before tagging along on a tour with Trump. (Johnson’s tasteless posts were roundly condemned even by some in conservative media.)

• Kristi Noem’s Department of Homeland Security shared a highly controversial post showing AI-generated alligators wearing Ice hats in front of barbed wire.

• Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, who claims to have come up with this disgusting plan, gleefully posted on Tuesday that the facility “opens today!”

• Fox hosts “couldn’t hide their excitement over the prospect of an undocumented immigrant being eaten by a giant reptile or suffocated by an enormous snake.”

Not surprising, Trump is the worst of all. He’s reveling in the horror of his latest made-for-TV immigration crackdown effort. Before visiting his new camp, this is the exchange Trump had with a Fox’s Peter Doocy:

Doocy: “With Alligator Alcatraz, is the idea that if some illegal immigrant escapes, they just get eaten by an alligator?

Trump: I guess that’s the concept. Snakes are fast but alligators— we’re going to teach them how to run away from an alligator. Don’t run in a straight line…”

The disgusting jokes about people being eaten alive by an apex predator continued throughout Trump’s visit to the facility on Tuesday. Every minute of it was vile, including the smiling photo op of Trump and others standing in front of the cages that will house the migrants. (it was eerily similar to the marketing video HHS Secretary shot standing in front of mountains of caged men in El Salvador.) On Wednesday, Trump posted an AI-generated photo on the official White House social media account showing himself with images of alligators wearing ICE Hats and the phrase “Alligator Alcatraz.” Even more MAGA porn.

What’s in a name? Everything.

The branding of this concentration camp as ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ is meant to summon comparisons to the infamous maximum security federal prison turned museum on an island off of San Francisco. Trump mused about taking over Alcatraz for these same purposes. When those plans were thwarted, Florida Governor Ron De Santis hatched this new everglades scheme.

Just because Trump, Republicans, and right wing media are embracing the nickname, should mainstream media do it too? I’m not alone in saying hell no. There’s been widespread criticism of the many headlines and news stories that feature ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ including this from lawyer Max Kennerly on BlueSky:

"Alligator Alcatraz" is wrong and the media should not use it. It's propaganda. Alcatraz held people convicted of crimes, particularly violent crimes. The Florida camp holds people *not* convicted of any crime. If they had been, they'd be in prison elsewhere. The site is a textbook concentration camp.“

Author Andrea Pitzer wrote a book about the history of concentration camps. She says the Florida structure is a concentration camp, too: “We see concentration camps on the rise in new places, particularly in the ad hoc Florida camp rising around an airstrip in the Florida Everglades.” On BlueSky, she added:

“Worth putting it on the record here, though you probably already know it: “Alligator Alcatraz” is a concentration camp.

Hmm, let’s see… mass detention of civilians without trial or traditional legal protections on the basis of identity (race, religion, ethnicity, political affiliation) rather than any criminal act, often for an indefinite period and done principally to expand political power. Check.”

Pitzer also notes that calling it ‘Alligator Auschwitz” is also wrong: “What's happening in the US is horrific. I've written a ton about it and will write more. As an expert on concentration camps, I think it's unhelpful to call what's happening Auschwitz.”

Actor George Takei wrote that the Florida gulag recalls the U.S. internment camp where he and his family were locked up during WW2:

“They’re planning on building a detention center for migrants in the middle of the fetid swamps of Florida. If you think this is something new, the first internment camp they sent me and my family to in 1942 was a barbed wire prison called Rohwer. It was located in the swamps of Arkansas. “

Pushing back against the naming of something may seem unimportant in the larger scheme of a fascist takeover by Trump. But clarity matters. Also crucial: not amplifying Trump propaganda. Journalists must resist the phrases meant to distract us all from brutal reality. Chicago journalist Mark Jacob told me:

“I describe the media as "ventriloquist dummies" when they eagerly adopt Republican branding, such as "Make America Healthy Again" for government policies that are likely to kill many people, or "the deep state" to describe hard-working civil servants who didn't deserve to be demonized.”

If you think naming (aka propaganda) lacks importance consider this. Would Congress be on the verge of passing the ‘defund healthcare, don’t feed kids, double down on fossil fuels, make the rich richer bill’? It’s a far more accurate description than ‘big beautiful bill.’ And yet, here we are.

So let’s call this swamp thing what it is: an American concentration camp.

Jennifer Schulze is a longtime Chicago journalist. She’s on Bluesky @newsjennifer.bsky.social and Substack at “Indistinct Chatter.”