Snapshot: "Alligator Alcatraz" is a Concentration Camp

Let's not be amused. Let's recognize the regime is escalating its hateful plan.

Donald Trump and Kristi Noem touring their new Florida prison. (Photo by Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)

Alligator Alcatraz. Such an entertaining and amusing name for this new place in the reptile-infested Florida Everglades to send migrants. Speaking to reporters on the grounds of the White House, the Sadist-in-Chief was really enjoying himself when asked if the idea is for prisoners trying to escape to get eaten by alligators. “I guess that’s the concept,” he said before sharing his pleasure.

"Snakes are fast but alligators—we're going to teach them how to run away from an alligator. Don't run in a straight line, run like this," he said, making a zigzag with his hands. "You know what, your chances go up about one percent."

So funny. So much fun. But make no mistake: This 3,000-bed facility quickly built with cages and razor-wire by floundering Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis—who is trying to get back into the cruelty spotlight—should be seen for what it is.

In short, “Alligator Alcatraz”—a facility where undocumented immigrants who have not received due process will be sent— is a concentration camp. This is no mere hyperbole.

As Steve Schmidt has noted here on Substack, Brittanica offers a clear definition of what a concentration camp entails. It’s worth taking a moment to read:

An internment centre for political prisoners and members of national or minority groups who are confined for reasons of state security, exploitation or punishment, usually by executive decree or military order. Persons are placed in such camps often on the basis of identification with a particular ethnic or political group rather than as individuals and without benefit either of indictment or fair trial. Concentration camps are to be distinguished from prisons interning persons lawfully convicted of civil crimes and from prisoner-of-war camps in which captured military personnel are held under the laws of war. They are also to be distinguished from refugee camps or detention and relocation centres for the temporary accommodation of large numbers of displaced persons.

Trump says it will house “some of the most vicious people on the planet” and the “worst of the worst.” But we already know that this labeling has typically been a lie to justify masked men snatching people off the streets and taking them away in unmarked cars without due process.

Trump also called the camp an “East Coast” version of the infamous prison off the coast of San Francisco, but that prison incarcerated people who had been tried and convicted in a court of law or pled guilty.

Trump’s sadistic, sycophantic Homeland Security chief, Kristi Noem, was happy to talk about this exciting new project as a possible model for other states. "Florida was unique in what they presented to us, and I would ask every other governor to do the exact same thing," Noem said.

During the visit with Trump and DeSantis, Noem also said that migrants could avoid going there “if they self-deport,” but then threatened “if you want and we bring you to this facility, you don’t ever get to come back to America.”

“The only way out,” Trump added, “is really deportation.”

It’s never a mistake to predict it will get worse with Trump and his hateful, lawless, authoritarian regime. I shudder to imagine the pleasure Trump will convey if and when an escapee is eaten or killed by an alligator. Its hard to imagine that he, Noem and the sadistic Trump advisor Stephen Miller are not planning other camps and other ways to punish migrants and other unwanted people that they demonize.

We can’t look away, even though we want to. We have to recognize they will continue to escalate the cruelty, the madness and the lawlessness as long as they can get away with it. I repeat Frederick Douglass’ words from 1857: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

It’s up to us to speak out, to push back, to refuse to let this hateful regime win. We can’t normalize what’s happening. Their over-reach, which included the immoral and repugnant bill passed yesterday by Trump’s Republican cult in the Senate, convinces me that the day is coming when more than 12 million Americans will finally say enough is enough.

May it be soon.

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