The new detention center in the Florida Everglades is called “Alligator Alcatraz.” Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis worked with the federal government to create the tent-based camp that can hold a projected 3,000 detained migrants at the price tag of $450 million a year. Today, host Allen Ruff is joined by journalist Joan Walsh to talk about her recent piece in The Nation, “The Abominable Sadism of Alligator Auschwitz,” in which she draws the comparison between the new camp and the Holocaust. 

The goal of “Alligator Alcatraz” is not just confinement but suffering, says Walsh. This cruelty is embedded in the Trump administration from Kristi Noem who poses like a dominatrix in front of detained men to Stephen Miller who lurks behind the scenes to get his “ruthless” ideals put into action. 

The “Alligator Alcatraz” camp is being built near an airstrip that DeSantis says will be used to increase deportations to other counties, thereby taking a playbook from the War on Terror when people were removed with no trace. Walsh’s current reporting focuses on nannies who are staying home because they’re afraid of getting picked up by ICE. There’s reason for folks to be afraid as masked agents make arrests with no accountability. 

We also hear from callers who raise issues of racism fueling ICE raids and abductions and callers who ask what happens to people once they’re taken by ICE. With the passing of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” ICE has become the number one law enforcement agency in the country.  

Joan Walsh is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation, a co-producer of The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts The Tonight Show, and the author of What’s the Matter With White People? Finding Our Way in the Next America. Her new book (with Nick Hanauer and Donald Cohen) is Corporate Bullsh*t: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power and Wealth In America. Walsh is an alumna of UW-Madison and was the Campus Editor at the Daily Cardinal.

Featured image of an ICE agent in uniform from the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service.

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