With the blessing of the federal government, the administration of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday began building an immigration detention center on an air strip deep in the Everglades where people ensnared in President Donald Trump’s deportation sweeps will be housed in trailers and “heavy duty” tents during the dog days of summer.

Planning to open the 1,000-bed facility within days, state law enforcement officials commandeered the environmentally sensitive land, owned by Miami-Dade County, and began ushering in trucks carrying portable restrooms and industrial generators. A private emergency management company was also on site, helping set up what state officials are calling “Alligator Alcatraz.”

The construction of the facility — surrounded by wetlands filled with alligators, snakes and mosquitos — represents a new, expanded front in Florida’s push to increase its immigration-enforcement footprint and the harsh optics deployed to dissuade migrants from entering the United States.

DeSantis and the Florida Cabinet have been lobbying the federal government for months to give them more autonomy to detain, house and deport immigrants, positioning the state as the most aggressive in the nation when it comes to illegal immigration.

Florida will run the facility at a cost of about $450 million a year, with the ability to seek reimbursement from the federal government, a senior Department of Homeland Security official told the Miami Herald in a statement on Monday.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the state-run immigration detention center will be a “cost-effective and innovative” way to deliver on Trump’s immigration agenda. There were 56,000 detained immigrants in federal custody as of mid-June, according to Syracuse University researchers at TRAC.

“We will expand facilities and bed space in just a few days, thanks to our partnership with Florida,” Noem said in a statement Monday to the Miami Herald.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Shelter and Services Program has set aside $625 million to fund the state’s effort, the senior official said. The previous administration used the program to support local governments and nonprofits house, feed, and transport immigrants released and processed by Homeland Security.

Noem said the program — which Trump falsely claimed left FEMA without disaster-recovery funds under President Joe Biden — was previously used as a “piggy bank to spend hundreds of millions of American taxpayer dollars to house illegal aliens.”

The White House referred the Herald to DHS. The Florida Division of Emergency Management, which is overseeing the facility’s operation, did not immediately respond to questions about who is being hired to build the facility and other details about the construction, including environmental permits and costs.

It is unclear how expansive the operation to build the facility will be. But state contractors were on site as early as Sunday afternoon, preparing to begin construction on Monday.

“It will be open the first week in July,” Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said in an interview Monday with Benny Johnson, a conservative social media personality. “We will have some light infrastructure, a lot of heavy duty tent facilities and trailer facilities. We don’t need to build a lot of brick and mortar.”

Companies and state officers entered the Miami-Dade County-owned property, using emergency powers granted to the governor under a declared state of emergency over illegal immigration issued in 2023.

Under Florida law, the governor has the power to commandeer or use any private property if it is deemed necessary to “cope” with an emergency.

State and county officials are currently negotiating the purchase of the property, which straddles the border between Miami-Dade and Collier counties. The state offered to pay $20 million for the land. A pair of county appraisals dated May 25 listed the value of the county land on the site, which sits within the Big Cypress National Preserve, at a combined value of $195 million.

Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, a Democrat, has raised concerns to state officials about developing the property, saying any changes to the location should require “considerable review and due diligence.”

In a Monday letter to Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie, Levine Cava said it is “imperative that we fully understand the scope and scale of the proposed use of the site and what will be developed, as the impacts to the Everglades ecosystem could be devastating.”

Alex Howard, a former DHS spokesperson under the Biden administration, described the Everglades facility as “Desantis’ Little Guantánamo in the swamp.”

“Turning the Everglades into a taxpayer-funded detention camp for migrants is a grotesque mix of cruelty and political theater. You don’t solve immigration by disappearing people into tents guarded by gators. You solve it with lawful processing, humane infrastructure, and actual policy — not by staging a $450 million stunt in the middle of hurricane season,” he said.

Betty Osceola, a Miccosukkee tribal member and one of the organizers of a Sunday protest against the detention center, said that on Sunday — mere days after Uthmeier announced his intent to inhabit the property — the gates to the facility were locked for the first time she can remember.

As protesters chanted and waved signs proclaiming “ICE melts in the Everglades,” they watched a steady stream of SUVs and Sprinter vans with blacked-out windows entering the property.

On the property, near the sole runway, she said she’s seen generators and solar panels.

“How is it that nothing has been signed on the dotted line, but they’re already moving in?” she said. “It’s very concerning. The speed at which things are happening and the secretiveness with which things are happening.”

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