With certain brands of Florida crime capers, greedy creeping tends to disappear in the Everglades. There, justice is left to the whims of the Hungry Swamp Beast.
Carl Heierzen’s “skinny dip” comes to mind. In it, Barry wrote: “The Everglades, two million acres of wild wetlands, have been forever sanctuaries and hideaways for all sorts of exemptions from hermits, moonshiners, drug runners, eccentrics, paramilitary wacko, madmen, cults, cults, criminals, society, or law or both.
It’s an explosion of books that include Dora the Explorer costumes, Smaldi politicians and secret treasures. Most titles in this tropical environment are riots and are ingrained in social satire that Florida journalists can convene. A huge fan here.
But while this could shock state leadership today, Florida crime fiction is not intended to be a public policy manual. Oops, because Gov. Ron DeSantis and his crew of Meathhead henchman appear to be competing for a spot on Barnes & Noble’s bestselling table.
Florida is building what is called “Wannial Catraz.” As we speak, work crews are rolling into sensitive lands in the environment owned by Miami-Dade County. Turning abandoned airfields into undocumented detention centers for immigrants will ease the Trump administration’s obsession with disappearing into fearful, far-reaching places.
The site’s plans amount to a glorious tent city that is projected to cost the state $450 million a year. It will be accompanied by assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. This was previously used to feed and residential immigrants who were released from detention. Because Python prisons are what Floridians need to focus on FEMA.
“People don’t get out and wait too much for them except for alligators and Pison,” Florida Attorney General James Usmierer said in X. His video message was accompanied by flashy slow-mo footage of Elsatz guitar metal and Gator.
Every morning, I wake up and look in the mirror and say, “I want to fall in history as the man who built the moat for Florida’s death. This is the kindness the manufacturer orders.”
However, in 2025, the government is implementing public safety through the snake pit. In the due process in a history-lowest suit sketching a thinly veiled concentration camp in cocktail napkins, we blink from throwing humans into the Coliseum with greedy lions.
In addition to the brutal heat in Florida and the potential for crude dehumanization and physical disasters during hurricane seasons, environmental issues are profound. Desantis and friends took several lots to develop golf courses and hotels on protected land. You’d think they might chill out before they bother the Everglades in the prisons that Gator Guard patrolled from Disney’s animated “Robin Hood.”
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Protesters fought the development of the site’s major airports more than 50 years ago. The ruins of the first work have since become a desolate South Florida fixture. In 2023, Barry told the Tampa Bay Times he was on it.
“It’s so big, it’s in the middle of the Everglades,” he said. “They were trying to build an airport there. It’s big enough to easily land a passenger plane or a space shuttle. Surrounded by alligators.”
Sooner or later, the original editor Colette Bancroft replied, someone would try to revive it.
“You’ll have to bail out the right Dade County politicians,” he said. “I think they’re taking benmo.”
Plot Twist: The Fed shared Florida, commanding territory in Faux’s “emergency.” Meanwhile, local leadership screams for the similarity of due diligence, information about scope, something, everything.
Protesters from the sleepless environment are revitalized along with the tribal indigenous people who called the Everglades home. The healthy Everglades adds $31.5 billion to the local economy each year, with tourism and real estate dollars benefiting millions living around the wetlands.
For countless reasons, this stranger’s fictional plan is worth fighting the ferociousness of the hero in a sun-stained Florida novel. And hold hope: in the best stories, the real bad guys get what comes to them in the dark, swampy swamp.
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