When you’re seeking to present your help for a jail facility that consultants say is a “human rights disaster waiting to happen,” you’re in luck: The latest migrant detention middle in Florida has a cutesy identify and quite a lot of official merch, together with beer koozies.
Earlier than President Donald Trump and his coterie final week toured what they’ve cruelly dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” ― a 5,000-bed facility, situated at an deserted airfield within the distant Everglades wetlands ― the Florida GOP was already fundraising off the unexpectedly constructed detention middle.
On Facebook and in an electronic mail to supporters sent on June 27, the Republican Party of Florida hawked graphic tees, beer koozies and hats emblazoned with the nickname of a jail they are saying might be “gator guarded” and “python-patrolled.” (The first detainees arrived last week on the website, which was constructed in a matter of weeks by the Florida state authorities with backing from the Division of Homeland Safety.)
“Surrounded by miles of swamp and bloodthirsty wildlife, this ain’t no trip spot. It’s a one-way ticket to remorse for criminals who’ll want they’d self-deported,” the merch post on Facebook read. “Each shirt, hat, or koozie you seize funds our push to maintain Florida powerful on crime and harder on borders.”
To not be outdone by the dystopian merch seize, Florida Legal professional Basic James Uthmeier ― the primary to provide you with the moniker (an homage to California’s former Alcatraz Island federal penitentiary) ― launched his personal T-shirts and bumper stickers: “Nowhere to run. Nowhere to cover,” the textual content of his tees read below an image of a chomping gator.
The Florida GOP stated its “Alligator Alcatraz” gear is “selling like hotcakes,” however not everybody within the state is a fan of the merch, or the jail. Native environmentalists say constructing in the course of the Everglades will instantly and indirectly harm nearby wetlands, wildlife, and air and water high quality.
State Rep. Fentrice Driskell, the Florida Home Minority Chief, referred to as the plans for the jail a “stain on the conscience of Florida.”
“It’s all enjoyable and video games till it’s your personal household, proper? And we’ve now learn sufficient accounts that there are people who find themselves lawfully current in the USA, even some United States residents who’ve been getting caught up in all of those stunts.”
“You actually need to ask your self, the place have we gone incorrect as a society if it’s on the level the place persons are making enjoyable of different households’ heartaches and ache?” she continued. “I by no means thought I’d see the day in America the place folks profiteering off of successfully what could possibly be a focus camp.”
Others have made the same argument: “[It’s] a focus camp, however with alligators. Don’t look away,” wrote Brad Landers, the New York Metropolis comptroller.
Others say that on the very least, the information media shouldn’t be parroting and normalizing the nickname “Alligator Alcatraz” in its reporting.
“No, we’re not calling it Alligator Alcatraz. It’s a Florida focus camp,” Benjamin Dreyer, the retired government managing editor and replica chief at Random Home, wrote on Bluesky.
Ought to the ability be referred to as a “focus camp”? It’s polarizing.
In an op-ed for MSNBC, Andrea Pitzer, an investigative journalist and creator of “One Lengthy Night time: A International Historical past of Focus Camps,” argued in favor of using “concentration camp” to explain the Everglades detention middle. (Pitzer’s e book seems to be at how governments have used detention as a instrument to quell dissent and punish with impunity.)
“This [Everglade] facility’s function matches the traditional mannequin: mass civilian detention without real trials focusing on susceptible teams for political achieve based mostly on ethnicity, race, faith or political affiliation rather than for crimes committed. And its existence factors to severe risks forward for the nation,” she wrote.
Beverly Crawford, a professor emerita of political science and political financial system on the College of California, Berkeley, researches anti-immigration narratives. She informed HuffPost she understands these in favor of utilizing “focus camps” however worries that such language may simply be misconstrued or manipulated by bad-faith actors.
“Whereas it has a broader historic that means — initially describing amenities for mass detention with out due course of, the phrase as we speak is deeply formed by its Holocaust affiliation,” she stated. “Certainly, for a lot of Individuals, it evokes the industrialized genocide of Nazi Germany.” (Imperial powers such as Spain and Great Britain set up concentration camps in colonial regions on the flip of the twentieth century, so Nazi Germany isn’t the “lone precedent for the Everglades mission,” as Pitzer notes in her op-ed.)
“I believe the time period may unintentionally derail conversations, alienate potential allies and even set off expenses of antisemitism or historic insensitivity, no matter intent,” Crawford stated.
There are higher alternate options that could possibly be used as a substitute, she stated: mass detention amenities, extrajudicial holding amenities, militarized detention compounds. The professor admits she’s not loopy about these phrases both, however they’d be more durable to weaponize in bad-faith arguments.
“They impart concern for democratic norms, authorized course of and human dignity — and are much less more likely to trigger reflexive rejection from undecided audiences,” Crawford stated.
Bloomberg through Getty Pictures
Stephen M. Utych, a YouGov researcher, is a former professor of political science at Boise State College who has studied how dehumanizing language influences attitudes towards immigrants. He thinks calling these detention facilities “focus camps” is a “completely cheap method.”
“It actually describes the horrors of those camps ― as described within the latest court docket submitting by Kilmar Abrego Garcia ― significantly better than the cutesy nicknames these on the appropriate have given them,” he stated. (Abrego Garcia, who was deported mistakenly from the U.S. to El Salvador in March, says he was severely beaten and subjected to psychological torture whereas held at CECOT, a mega-prison in Tecoluca, El Salvador.)
“I believe it’s vital to speak about this stuff in harsh phrases so the general public can perceive how horrible they’re,” Utych stated.
“I perceive why some could be hesitant utilizing the time period ‘focus camp’ specifically, however in the meantime, the Trump administration is utilizing a cute slogan for this camp and the [GOP] is promoting merchandise with the identify on it ― they’re doing that to attenuate any horrors that will go on there,” he stated.
“It’s vital for these of us against name these what they’re,” he added.
Tyler Anbinder, a professor of historical past at George Washington College who makes a speciality of Nineteenth-century America and the historical past of immigration and ethnicity in American life, thinks the “Alligator Alcatraz” nickname is extra ridiculous than offensive.
In the summertime of 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower launched “Operation Wetback,” which like with the current-day ICE raids, used military-style techniques and resulted within the mass deportation of Mexican nationals.
“If Florida was calling this ‘Wetback Alcatraz’ in echoes of that, that may be demeaning and repulsive, however the introduced identify is simply juvenile,” Anbinder stated. “To me, it’s much less offensive than renaming American navy bases after Accomplice officers who betray their oaths to uphold the structure.”
No matter you name it, the mission itself is a large number. The shoddily constructed camp has already flooded as soon as, might not meet hurricane codes and isn’t formally authorized or funded by the federal authorities, according to the Washington Post.
Calling it “Alligator Alcatraz” is an ideal instance of the Trump administration’s “vice signaling.”
Since promising to “launch the biggest deportation program in American historical past,” Trump and his administration have leaned into merciless spectacles, from Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem wearing a $50,000 Rolex watch whereas utilizing CECOT prisoners as a backdrop for a photo-op to ICE brokers in full tactical gear busting day laborers looking for work in Residence Depot parking tons.
These sorts of merciless political stunts have been described by thinker and Georgetown College professor Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò as “vice signaling:” If advantage signaling is supposed to reveal your good ethical character, vice signaling is supposed to reveal “proof of dangerous ethical character, by purposely failing to fulfill the evaluative requirements of its viewers.”
Everybody needs in on the vice signaling, too. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) tweeted final week that she has a “swamp and a dream” and needs to deliver Alligator Alcatraz 2.0 to South Carolina.
Far-right activist and Trump ally Laura Loomer took the maliciousness even additional, joking on X that “alligator lives matter” after which suggesting that Florida’s alligators could be assured not less than 65 million meals. (As of July 2023, the Hispanic inhabitants of the United States is 65.2 million.)

Andrew Caballero-Reynolds through Getty Pictures
“Alligator Alcatraz” ― the nickname, the gleeful tour Trump and Noem took of the ability with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in tow, the one-upmanship in merciless rhetoric, all of the merch ― is vice signaling writ massive. At one level, Trump joked that future escaping detainees ought to be taught to zigzag as a substitute of operating in a straight line to dodge pursuing alligators.
“All of it is a performative tactic designed to dehumanize immigrants within the eyes of the American public,” Crawford stated.
“The time period itself conflates the menacing picture of Alcatraz, a most safety jail for hardened and violent criminals surrounded by shark-infested waters, with the false picture of a detention middle for ‘unlawful’ immigrants ‘guarded’ by vicious alligators.”
The intention is to border migrants not as susceptible folks looking for work or refuge, “whose solely ‘crime’ is crossing the border exterior ports of entry, however as harmful criminals,” the professor stated. “And in the event that they’re criminals, why not throw them to the gators?”
The Florida Everglades detention middle is predicted to initially home 3,000 immigrant detainees. Whereas their identities aren’t but recognized but, roughly 71% of immigrants detained nationwide typically haven’t any legal file, in keeping with the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse College.
“It’s provided that these immigrants’ claims are denied by a court docket, that they’re thought of unlawful,” Crawford stated. ”The solely crime is an irregular border crossing and the punishment is detention and deportation. But the jail’s identify helps paint them as violent criminals who belong in most safety detention.”
When the president calls alligators “cops” and jokes that the animals are cheaper than hiring guards, he’s turning state cruelty into leisure and making Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers’ work extra palpable to the general public, Crawford stated.
“The time period ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ which has gone viral on social media, sparks public worry of detainees who’re largely simply making an attempt to do their jobs,” she stated. “It’s strategic. Cruelty cloaked in humor is supposed to trivialize a harsh detention coverage, disarm criticism, deflect scrutiny and uninteresting public outrage.”