Environmental Concerns at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ Include Storms and Flooding
By: Hiroko Tabuchi and Mira Rojanasakul | Published: 2025-08-04 19:29:00 | Source: www.nytimes.com
The day President Trump toured “Alligator Alcatraz,” the sprawling new immigrant detention center in Florida’s Everglades, he quipped that any escapees would need to learn “how to run away from an alligator.”
That danger is exaggerated, experts say. But the vast, subtropical wilderness of the Everglades poses other grave risks to detainees, particularly hurricanes and tropical storms.
The detention site, designed to hold several thousand people, is built mainly of tent-like temporary structures and trailers on swampland that’s roughly a dozen feet above sea level. Over the past 35 years, a tropical storm or hurricane has passed through the region roughly once every two years, on average.
Historical storm paths since 1990
