The federal government and the state of Florida today announced a partnership to make Fort Jefferson in Dry Tortugas National Park an ICE detention and deportation facility.
The governor’s and president’s offices issued a joint announcement on April 1, with state immigration officials touting their prior efforts to construct a detention facility, known as Alligator Alcatraz, in the middle of the Everglades.
Dry Tortugas National Park is a remote island outpost 70 miles west of Key West that is dominated by massive brick Fort Jefferson that was built in the 1840s and 1850s.
In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt designated the fort and surrounding islands as a national park, which today welcomes an estimated 70,000 visitors annually. The area is also a protected marine and wildlife sanctuary.
But the new plan, announced April 1, aims to “return Fort Jefferson to its historic, original and intended mission as a strategic military asset. The site is vital to national security and the defense of the Gulf of America,” states a press release from state officials. “Florida is willing to use any and all resources to remove illegal immigrants from the Sunshine State.”
The US Department of Homeland Security and Florida’s Immigration Enforcement Council recently audited all federal- and state-owned properties in Florida “to ensure each site is being used for purposes that align with and advance the president’s and governor’s America First agenda,” states the April 1 announcement.
The report acknowledges the significant costs associated with updating Fort Jefferson for use as a detention center. It also dismisses any environmental concerns, pointing to Florida’s other hastily built detention center in another environmentally sensitive national park — Alligator Alcatraz in the Everglades. Government officials are meeting today, April 1, to determine a “meaningful name” for the Dry Tortugas facility.
“This has never been done before. No one else thought of it until me,” the president told reporters in the Oval Office on April 1. “The fake news will say I’m a fool. They’ll tell people this can’t be real. It must be a joke. But we’ll see who the fools are.”
