OCHOPEE, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday toured a new immigration detention center surrounded by alligator-filled swamps in the Florida Everglades, suggesting it could be a model for future lockups nationwide as his administration races to expand the infrastructure necessary for increasing deportations.
Trump said he’d like to see similar facilities in “really, many states” and raised the prospect of also deporting U.S. citizens. He even endorsed having Florida National Guard forces possibly serve as immigration judges to ensure migrants are ejected from the country even faster.
“Pretty soon, this facility will handle the most menacing migrants, some of the most vicious people on the planet,” Trump said of the Florida site known as “Alligator Alcatraz.”
The president said the moniker is “very appropriate because I looked outside and that’s not a place I want to go hiking anytime soon.”
“The only way out, really, is deportation,” Trump added.