It’s a wonder that human civilization has successfully reclaimed the South Florida wilderness for settlement and habitation.
If Florida Republicans intended to provoke their Democratic counterparts by informally deeming a planned detention facility for deportation-eligible migrants “Alligator Alcatraz,” the plan worked.
The legacy and center-left press is alive with fury over the project. So far, it appears that much of their hostility is centered on the fact that the facility will be located in Florida.
“There has been significant pushback from Democrats and immigration advocates who see the project as inhumane,” NBC News reported. “They have objected to putting people whom the administration has identified as being undocumented in the middle of a swamp surrounded by snakes and alligators in the middle of the Florida heat — and in an area of the state that is prone to hurricanes.”
Reptiles? Heat? Hurricanes? Precisely what part of the Sunshine State are these not features of daily life? These are the risks that confront residents of Hialeah as much as they will future detainees.
To hear the activists tell it, you could be forgiven for assuming the detention facility was being carved out of an untouched stretch of pristine Everglades wilderness. In fact, it’s located at the site of the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, a largely unused runway.
Reporters have taken to wondering if the site — a sticky, mosquito-infested swamp surrounded by “alligators and pythons,” as Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier put it — isn’t suited to its role as a detention center merely due to its isolation. Perhaps, the whole point of the enterprise is to offer up migrants to the local fauna as food.
“When asked Tuesday whether the intent was for the alligators to eat escaping detainees, Trump said he guessed ‘that’s the concept,’” the Washington Post reported with far more earnestness than the president’s response conveyed.
The president didn’t do much to relieve his hyperventilating critics’ apprehension. “Detainees should be taught not to run away from the reptiles in a straight line, he said, making a zigzagging motion with his hand,” the Post horrified reporters dutifully related. “(Experts have debunked this advice and do recommend running away from alligators in a straight line).”
The president’s taunting seems to have had its intended effect on his domestic opponents, some of whom have abandoned all perspective with the declaration that the proposed facility will instantly become “the most inhumane prison in the world.” It is a certainty that “anyone who tries to leave the camp will be immediately devoured by wild animals,” this propagandist blog insisted. “The first hurricane will tear this tent camp apart, leaving detainees defenseless in the middle of the swamp, surrounded by hungry wildlife. Snakes and alligators will swim in.”
It’s a wonder that human civilization has successfully reclaimed the South Florida wilderness for settlement and habitation.