(News Nation) – President Donald Trump is expected to visit a controversial detention center called “Crocodile Alcatraz” when it opens Tuesday.
The immigration detention center, which was quickly tracked by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, is located deep in the state’s Everglades wetlands, located at the Big Cypress National Reserve’s abandoned Dade Collier training and transition airport.
The facility will include temporary structures such as heavy duty tents and trailers to turn detained migrants into homes. The state estimates that 5,000 immigration detention beds will be operated by early July.
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Environmental groups fear the site will harm the Everglades ecosystem. The Everglades ecosystem is full of large reptiles, including crocodiles and Burmese Pisons.
Desantis touts the area’s wildlife as positive.
The unfortunate airport originally planned for space was abandoned in 1970 after warning that the construction of a large-scale airport in the Everglades would lead to draining and developing large-scale Cypress swamp land that would destroy “agriculture, transport, and the South Florida ecosystem, and thus the South Florida ecosystem, and thus the Evagrade National Park.”
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Some Native American leaders claim that the center will invade sacred land. 15 traditional Miklor and Seminole villages, ceremonies and burial sites and other gathering locations are located in the Big Cypress National Reserve, with runways.
Human rights activists have called the facility inhumanely, raising the issue as temporary tents and trailers are potentially housed in the eventual tents and trailers during Florida’s hurricane season.
Environmental groups filed a last-minute lawsuit late Friday to stop the facility opening.
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In response, Desantis’ office said the detention centre was “a staging operation necessary for mass repatriation at existing airports that do not affect the surrounding environment.”
Desantis is reportedly considering a second processing centre at Camp Blanding, the National Guard training base.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
