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PULSE POINTS
❓WHAT HAPPENED: President Donald J. Trump announced the opening of a new illegal immigrant detention facility, nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz,” in the Florida Everglades.
👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: President Trump, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and Florida officials.
📍WHEN & WHERE: The announcement was made Tuesday during a roundtable discussion following a tour of the Miami-Dade Collier Training Facility in the Florida Everglades.
💬KEY QUOTE: “It’s known as Alligator Alcatraz, which is very appropriate because I looked outside, and that’s not a place I want to go hiking anytime soon,” said President Trump.
🎯IMPACT: The facility is expected to begin processing, detaining, and deporting illegal immigrants immediately, with some reportedly self-deporting already.
IN FULL
The Trump administration used Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) money allocated by the Biden government to house illegal immigrants in luxury hotels in New York City to construct “Alligator Alcatraz” in the Florida Everglades, President Donald J. Trump said Tuesday during a roundtable discussion after touring the facility.
Trump toured the existing Miami-Dade Collier Training Facility, which has, in just eight days, been transformed into a detention center designed to process, detain, and deport illegal immigrants, alongside Florida Governor and former Republican primary rival Ron DeSantis.
“It’s a great honor to be deep in Florida—the Florida Everglades—to open America’s newest migrant detention center, incredibly built, and you’re seeing that yourself,” Trump said. “That’s why I said, let the press join us on our walk so they can see what’s happening. It’s known as Alligator Alcatraz, which is very appropriate because I looked outside, and that’s not a place I want to go hiking anytime soon,” the President joked.
“But very soon, this facility will house some of the most menacing migrants, some of the most vicious people on the planet,” he continued. “We’re surrounded by miles of treacherous swampland, and the only way out is really deportation. And a lot of these people are self-deporting back to their country where they came from,” Trump said.
“Quite a few were amazed at actually the number we took the FEMA money that Joe Biden allocated to pay for the free luxury hotel rooms, where he’s paying hundreds of millions of dollars in New York City, and we used it to build this project,” Trump told reporters. “And Ron [DeSantis], it was just a little fraction of that money—the money they spent on that project,” he added.
Despite a bruising primary campaign against DeSantis, the President said he now rates his relationship with the Florida Governor as “a 10, maybe a 9.9 because there might be a couple of little wounds.”
Addressing DeSantis directly, he said, “You’re my friend and you’ll always be my friend. We may even have some skirmishes in the future. I doubt it, but we’ll always come back because we have blood that seems to match pretty well.”
.@POTUS at Alligator Alcatraz: “It’s a great honor to be deep in Florida—the Florida Everglades to open America’s newest migrant detention center… Very soon, this facility will house some of the most menacing migrants—some of the most vicious people on the planet.” pic.twitter.com/WxFu47oOdj
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) July 1, 2025
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