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(NewsNation) — President Donald Trump is expected to sojourn Florida's controversial detention center dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz" erstwhile it opens Tuesday, a root acquainted with the substance told NewsNation.
The immigrant detention center, fast-tracked by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, is located heavy successful the state's Everglades wetlands.
The facility volition see impermanent structures specified arsenic heavy-duty tents and trailers to location detained immigrants. The authorities has estimated that by aboriginal July, it volition person 5,000 migration detention beds successful operation.
Environmental groups fearfulness the tract volition harm the Everglades' ecosystem, which is teeming with monolithic reptiles, including alligators and Burmese pythons.
DeSantis has touted the area's wildlife arsenic a positive: "Clearly, from a information perspective, if idiosyncratic escapes, you know, there’s a batch of alligators. No one’s going anywhere.”
Some Native American leaders assertion the halfway encroaches connected ineffable land. There are 15 accepted Miccosukee and Seminole villages, arsenic good arsenic ceremonial and burial grounds and different gathering sites, successful Big Cypress National Preserve, wherever the airstrip is located.
Human rights activists person called the installation inhumane and raised issues with perchance thousands of radical being housed successful impermanent tents and trailers during Florida's hurricane season.
Environmental groups precocious Friday filed a last-minute lawsuit to halt the facility's opening.
In response, DeSantis' bureau said the detention is simply a “necessary staging cognition for wide deportations located astatine a preexisting airdrome that volition person nary interaction connected the surrounding environment.”
DeSantis is besides reportedly considering a second processing halfway astatine Camp Blanding, a National Guard grooming base.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
