The Florida-based illegal alien processing facility that the media loved to hate — affectionately known as “Alligator Alcatraz” — has now processed over 21,000 individuals for deportation. And here’s the kicker: officials are discussing winding the whole thing down. Not because it failed. Not because some activist judge shut it down. Because it’s running out of work to do.
That sound you hear is the left trying to figure out how to spin “wildly successful government program” into a bad thing.
The facility, built at Dade-Collier Airport deep in the Florida Everglades between Miami and Naples, was thrown together in just eight days. Eight. You can’t get a permit to build a deck in most blue cities in eight days, but Florida built an entire deportation processing center on a site with a 2.5-mile runway. Governor Ron DeSantis committed the land and made it happen while Democrat governors were still writing sternly worded letters about “immigrant rights.”
As Fox News national correspondent Bill Melugin has reported extensively, the facility became one of the most visible symbols of the Trump administration’s enforcement-first immigration policy. A senior Florida official confirmed to 100 Percent Fed Up that “since its inception, Alligator Alcatraz has processed over 21,000 illegal aliens for deportation.”
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Twenty-one thousand. Let that number sit for a second. That’s a small city’s worth of illegal aliens who were in this country, got caught, got processed, and got sent home. And the facility did its job so efficiently that preliminary closure discussions are now underway — not because of budget cuts or political pressure, but because the pipeline is drying up. Fewer people are crossing illegally when they know there’s an alligator-adjacent processing center waiting for them on the other end.
Now, critics loved to screech about the reported $1 million per day operating cost. A million dollars a day sounds like a lot — until you do the math on what 21,000 illegal aliens cost American taxpayers in healthcare, education, housing, and law enforcement over a lifetime. That million bucks a day is the best deal the federal government has made since the Louisiana Purchase.
The facility is part of a broader enforcement push backed by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and the Trump administration’s $608 million Detention Support Grant Program through FEMA, which offered states funding to assist with immigration detention and processing. Florida grabbed the opportunity. California wrote an op-ed.
Here’s what drives the left absolutely insane about Alligator Alcatraz: it worked. Not in the way government programs usually “work,” where bureaucrats declare victory after spending ten billion dollars and accomplishing nothing. This one actually processed people, actually deported them, and is actually winding down because there are fewer people to process. That’s what success looks like in a government that’s actually trying to enforce its own laws.
The facility sitting out there in the Everglades — on land Florida committed will never be developed — did more for border enforcement than four years of the Biden administration’s entire immigration policy. And it did it in a swamp. With alligators.
Twenty-one thousand processed. Facility closing due to lack of demand. That’s not a government program ending — that’s a mission accomplished.
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