Kristi Noem says she wants more “Alligator Alcatraz” facilities built near airports across the country. Florida’s immigration detention center out in the Everglades is now the blueprint. She’s pushing other states to copy the model. Her reasoning? It is faster, cheaper, and located right next to a runway, which makes deportations easier.
Fine. Let’s roll with it. For now.
Noem wants more ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ facilities near airports to boost ‘efficiency’ https://t.co/aHdwJajc4D pic.twitter.com/2DC8vBoOdU
— The Independent (@Independent) August 5, 2025
But here is the part no one seems to say out loud. These pop-up concrete pens should not last forever. They are supposed to be temporary holding areas, not permanent fixtures. If we are serious about ending the illegal immigration crisis, then let’s act like it. Let’s use these facilities as a blunt tool for a short-term job. Then tear them down and move on.
The Biden administration had four years to let millions of illegals flood in. I will take eight years to ship them all back. But I do not want to look up in 2033 and see detention camps still standing at every airport terminal like some new normal. I am not interested in normalizing the rot.
Alligator Alcatraz is a holding pen for people who broke the law. That’s what it’s supposed to be. It cost nearly half a billion dollars in its first year, sits in the middle of a swamp, and holds thousands under armed federal custody. Perfect. You break into a country, you don’t get a welcome basket. But the media? They wailed about the heat, the bugs, the storms, the lack of creature comforts. As if the real scandal is that illegal aliens aren’t getting turn-down service and lavender-scented sheets. Give me a break.
But here is the part they leave out. These people should not be there for long. That’s the whole point. Process them quickly. Put them on a plane. Send them home.
Do not create a brand new prison-industrial complex and call it immigration enforcement.
Noem says she is working with states like Arizona and Nebraska to build more of these sites near other runways. Louisiana is on the list, too. Her team says contracts will stay under five years to avoid long-term infrastructure. If she sticks to that, good. But that is a big if. Washington does not exactly have a great track record of building something temporary and then getting rid of it. Just look at the TSA, the Patriot Act, or even the leftover COVID plexiglass still hanging in some stores like museum pieces. Nothing built by government ever stays “temporary.”
I want results, not another border bureaucracy that drags on long after the crisis is over. We do not need shiny new immigration forts that quietly evolve from temporary holding centers into permanent institutions. That is how America gets stuck with bloated budgets and mission creep. First, it is ten facilities, then it is twenty, then some contractor starts lobbying Congress to keep them funded just a little longer. Before you know it, we are detaining citizens for paperwork mistakes and calling it homeland security.
This is what happens when the government builds things with no expiration date. We need a plan, not just a headline. Noem is right to be aggressive. I’m with her 100 percent. And we need more governors who act instead of posture. But they also need to know when to call it. These sites must come with a countdown clock. If you build it, you’d better already know when you’re tearing it down. Because the goal is to round up the illegals and send them home. Period. A stronger border and real enforcement should mean we don’t need detention centers on every runway forever.
And here is a reminder to the America First crowd. Immigration enforcement is not just about stopping the flow. It is about reversing the damage already done. It is about locating the millions already here, removing them lawfully, and doing it in a way that respects the rule of law without turning the country into a permanent detention zone.
We do not need Guantanamo with Wi-Fi. We need functional tools to end the chaos that the last administration allowed. That is it. You cannot solve illegal immigration by turning every airport into a fortress. You solve it by shutting the border, ending asylum fraud, and deporting fast. Do it right and you won’t need concrete cages with heatstroke warnings in ten years.
For more than a decade, ICE — which operates under Homeland Security — has turned to corporate shipping and logistics companies for inspiration for rounding up and deporting immigrants. Shortly after he was tapped to lead the agency in March, ICE’s acting director, Todd Lyons, bluntly compared the movement of people to packages.
“We need to get better at treating this like a business, where this mass deportation operation is something like you would see and say, like, Amazon trying to get your Prime delivery within 24 hours,” Lyons told a law enforcement conference in Phoenix in April.
“So, trying to figure out how to do that with human beings,” he said. – The Independent
I support what Kristi Noem is trying to do. For now. But I also want guarantees. These are not monuments. They are mop-up stations. If you build them, use them, and then tear them down, I’m on board. But if this turns into another forever program that feeds federal contractors and saps state budgets, then it is just more of the same with a different hat.
Temporary means temporary. We do not need a new permanent stain on the map. We just need our country back.
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