President Donald Trump on Tuesday pivoted — once again — to illegal immigration by touring a new Florida detention center known as “Alligator Alcatraz” as his poll numbers on his signature issue have sunk and congressional Democrats continue slamming his mass deportation program.
Asked if the soon-to-open Everglades facility — so dubbed because of the thousands of alligators that Florida state officials contend surround it — could be a model for other places, Trump responded: “It can be.”
“You don’t always have land so beautiful and so secure. We have a lot of bodyguards and a lot of cops, but in the form of alligators — you don’t have to pay them so much. I wouldn’t want to run through the Everglades for long,” he said. Trump added that he would like to see more detention sites in “many” other states and said some might need to become permanent.
