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
“Say a Cat 5 comes through Central Florida,” said Jason Houser, former chief of staff at United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, referring to a Category 5 hurricane, which whips up winds of more than 150 miles per hour. “You’re looking at massive winds, flooding and you’re going to get officers killed,” he said.”You’re going to get migrants killed.”
The area is also subject to other risks including intense rainfall, extreme heat and humidity, and wildfires during the dry season, when water levels tend to recede.
As U.S. immigration authorities expand their capacity to detain people, they are increasingly relying on soft-sided tent structures, which make the sites more vulnerable to extreme weather, experts say. Similar tents have been used to hold migrants in Cuba’s Guantánamo Bay and on the grounds of Miami’s overcrowded Krome detention center.
The Florida Division of Emergency Management, which operates the facility, did not respond to questions about evacuation plans, the ability of the buildings to withstand wind and other matters.
But as concerns mounted over risks to the site, it released a heavily redacted document last week that laid out “the need for a full-scale evacuation and relocation due to a tropical cyclone.”
“The geography of this location, while ideal for integrated detention operations,” the introduction to the report said, “is vulnerable to tropical weather.”
At a public briefing last month, Kevin Guthrie, Florida’s head of emergency management, said the facility could withstand hurricane winds of up to Category 2, or up to 110 miles per hour. Hurricane season runs through November 30. The site would need to be evacuated if a storm stronger than a Category 2 hurricane threatened it, Mr. Guthrie said.
Mr. Houser, the former ICE chief of staff, said the tents the agency used during his tenure were designed to withstand winds of up to about 75 miles per hour, the speed at which wind starts to be considered hurricane-force.
Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement that, “as with any facility, ICE has plans in case of emergency, including a hurricane plan.”
The United States has a history of putting detention centers in harsh environments. In the 1940s, the United States government built internment camps for citizens of Japanese descent in the deserts of California, Wyoming and other Western states, where detainees endured extreme heat in the summer, freezing temperatures in the winter, along with strong winds and dust storms. From the 1980s, the United States government detained and processed Haitian refugees on board ships at sea and at a Navy base in Guantanamo Bay.
Officials have said “Alligator Alcatraz” could house as many as 4,000 people in tents and rows of trailers. It was built in little more than a week and is surrounded by the Great Cypress National Preserve in the Everglades ecosystem, on an old airstrip 13 feet above sea level.
Known as the “River of Grass,” the Everglades is one of America’s most distinctive landscapes, encompassing tangled mangroves and marshland. It is a habitat for rare wildlife, and recharges an aquifer that supplies clean water to millions of people in South Florida. Native Americans, including the Miccosukee tribe, have made their homes there. For miles around the facility, much of the ground is covered by a shallow sheet of water for many months of the year.
“It’s isolated. It’s flat. And it’s wet. And the area’s been cleared for the airport, which makes the structures there much more vulnerable to the winds,” said David S. Nolan, professor at the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science at the University of Miami. “You’re really getting almost the maximum possible winds that you could over land.”
In 2017, Hurricane Irma caused widespread tree damage and knocked out power to some areas within the Everglades. Aerial surveys by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration found “staggering damage” to trees there at the time.
Irma brought hurricane-force winds in 2017
Last year, Hurricane Milton spawned dozens of tornadoes, one of which passed through a section of the Everglades and into Lake Okeechobee, generating peak winds of 140 miles per hour. A weaker tornado came closer, within miles of the detention site, with winds of up to 85 miles per hour.
Other hurricanes have also wreaked havoc in the Everglades. Andrew, a Category 5 hurricane at landfall with winds of 165 miles per hour, uprooted mangrove trees and damaged 70,000 acres of wetlands. Hurricanes Wilma and Katrina in 2005 both brought hurricane-force winds to the area.
Evacuating the site would be a challenge, experts said. The detention facility is accessed by a two-lane road, which could make it challenging to move thousands of people. “That’s something I hope they’re preparing for,” said Jeffrey Lindsey, a fire and emergency services director and lecturer at the University of Florida.
Mr. Guthrie, the Florida emergency chief, has said his team had recently visited several prisons to evaluate them as potential sites to evacuate detainees to during a major storm.
Flooding in the low-lying expanse of the Everglades is unlikely to develop as fast as the devastating flash floods in Texas in recent weeks, experts said. However, when the area floods, water is typically very slow to drain, said Elizabeth Dunn, a researcher at the University of Southern Florida with an expertise in disaster management and homeland security. Government flood maps indicate high flood risk in the area around the detention center.
On its opening day, as President Trump visited the site, news cameras showed water seeping into the site from a passing storm.
“It’s very flat land, and it’s going to sit there for a while,” Ms. Dunn said of potential floodwaters. In addition, possible damage to roads, levees and power lines raises other logistical risks. “How are you going to get food in? How are you going to get medical supplies, how are you going to get people out?” she said.
Wildfire perimeters since 1990
The Everglades’ dry winter and spring months bring different threats. Surface water retreats, and wildfires become frequent and widespread. In May, a fire in Big Cypress burned more than 6,500 acres of pine, cypress and grass.
The fires can be tough to contain, said Mr. Lindsey, who is a retired fire chief with more than 45 years of experience with hurricanes and wildland fires. “You’re talking about swamps,” he said. “Navigating through that becomes very difficult, and sometimes it’s easier to let the fires burn.”
But firefighters typically didn’t need to consider the risks to thousands of people in the middle of the Florida swamp, he said. “It’s mostly animals you see trying to escape,” he said.
In recent weeks, detainees have reported backed-up portable toilets, rainwater leaking into tents and spotty air conditioning. Lack of infrastructure at the site has meant that drinking and bathing water must be trucked in, and sewage hauled away. Environmental groups are suing to halt further construction at the site, saying the facilities failed to undergo environmental reviews.
The Florida facility could be used as a blueprint as the federal government expands locations to hold immigrants facing deportation, the Department of Homeland Security said last month. “We’ve had several other states,” Secretary Kristi Noem said at a briefing, “that are actually using ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ as a model.”