President Trump has built a brand new detention center and he’s pretty proud of what he describes as “its ability to keep people where they’re supposed to be.”
The Everglades detention center is for immigrants whose status in the US is illegal. Its current nickname, “Alligator Alcatraz,” has a goofy etymology. At first, Trump wanted to reopen Alcatraz to hold criminal offenders who were also illegal immigrants as a symbolic statement, but after reports said it would be too expensive, he moved the plan to the middle of a Florida swamp that’s reportedly an ecological preservation area full of alligators and other reptiles. Although the actual construction is on an abandoned airfield and isn’t displacing wildlife, protesters mockingly called the facility “Alligator Alcatraz” — which, as you can probably guess, Trump fully embraced.
