BIG CYPRESS PRESERVE -- A plan to house thousands of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees in the Everglades is drawing protests from the Sierra Club, the Miccosukee Tribe, Friends of the Everglades and other environmental groups as well as concerns from the Mayor of Miami-Dade County.

The site, which is within the Big Cypress National Preserve, was once considered for a major airport. Marjory Stoneman Douglas, author of “River of Grass,” founded Friends of the Everglades to oppose the Everglades Jetport. Construction halted in 1969.

Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava has called for reviews and due diligence before the land is conveyed to the state. In a letter sent June 23 to the Florida Division of Emergency Management, the mayor asked for more details about the project’s environmental impact. 

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier discussed the plan in an interview posted on X (formerly known as Twitter) on June 23. “As of this morning, the federal government has approved our detention facility plan. We’re going to have 5,000 beds up and running by early July, at a couple facilities including what I call Alligator Alcatraz.

“It’s an old, abandoned airfield … It’s got an 11,000 foot runway there. Big planes can land. The National Guard will be on site,” he said.

 “It will be open first week in July,” he said. “We’ll have some light infrastructure, a lot of heavy-duty tent facilities and trailers. We don’t need to do a lot of brick and mortar. Mother Nature does a lot on the perimeter.

“There’s really nowhere to go if you are housed there, if you are detained there, there is no way in, no way out,” said Uthmeier.

He promised Florida will provide ICE with “5,000 bed by early July. Many of them will be at Alligator Alcatraz.”

According to statements by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, funding for the facility – an estimated $450 million a year – will come, in part, from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) shelter and services program.

A June 22 protest, organized by Betty Osceola, of the Miccosukee Tribe of Florida, attracted hundreds of protesters who lined the sides of the Tamiami Trail near the site. Many stated their opposition to the project is not political, but out of concern for the fragile ecosystem of the Everglades.

On social media, Osceola questioned the impact of the human waste the facility would create. An average person produces roughly 0.1 gallons of feces per day and approximately 0.4 gallons of urine per day, she explained. The site does not have  sewer lines.  

The Chairman of the Miccosukee Tribe released this statement on June 23: “Rather than Miccosukee homelands being an uninhabited wasteland for alligators and pythons, as some have suggested, the Big Cypress is the Tribe’s traditional homelands. The landscape has protected the Miccosukee and Seminole people for generations. This past year, Miccosukee leadership worked alongside a diverse coalition of interest groups in southwest Florida, traveling to and from Washington, D.C. to testify to oppose threats to access to the Big Cypress and defend public and Tribal rights to continue to live, hunt, and fish in traditional homelands. The proposed detention center is immediately adjacent to the Tamiami Trail, which hosts 19 traditional Miccosukee and Seminole villages, as well as the Congressionally authorized Miccosukee Reserved Area, and the Miccosukee Water Conservation Area 3-A.”

 Glades County Detention Center, which reopened in April, has a contract to house 500 federal detainees.