Stark first photos from inside Alligator Alcatraz reveal bleak digs for up to 5,000 migrants

The first photos of “Alligator Alcatraz” give a bleak inside look at the new migrant center deep in the Florida Everglades — as authorities prepare to stash up to 5,000 detainees in wire cages there.Video taken during a tour by President Trump on Tuesday revealed rows upon rows of empty industrial metal bunk beds enclosed in hastily constructed cages made up of chain fences.“[President] Biden wanted me in here, that son of a b—h,” President Trump said jokingly Tuesday as he was shown around the vast secure facility hidden within the subtropical wetlands of South Florida teeming with alligators, crocodiles and pythons.“I looked outside, and that’s not a place I want to go hiking anytime soon,” Trump told reporters after his tour.

“We’re surrounded by miles of treacherous swampland, and the only way out is really deportation.”The complex, located at the Dade Collier Training and Transition Airport, will cost an estimated $450 million a year to operate, and the first migrants are set to arrive as soon as Wednesday.Some of the cost of the facility — which Florida Gov.Ron DeSantis said was built in just eight days — will be reimbursed from FEMA’s Shelter and Services Program, officials said.The site features at least 200 security cameras, 28,000 feet of barbed wire and more than 400 security personnel, officials said.Dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” or “Gator Gitmo,” the state-built facility in Florida’s infamous Alligator Alley aims to help ICE reach its migrant deportation targets.It lies in the middle of Route 41 — the road that crosses the south of the Sunshine State from Miami to Naples.“There’s only one road leading in, and the only way out is a one-way flight,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Monday ahead of President Trump’s visit.

“It is isolated and surrounded by dangerous wildlife and unforgiving terrain.”Former President Obama said jokingly in 2011 that Republicans were so hardline, the...