"You don't need to invest that much in the perimeter. If people get out, there's not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons," explains the state's attorney general, James Uthmeier, a Republican, in a video set to rock music and posted on social media.
The airfield where the detention centre will be based is mainly a pilot training runway surrounded by vast swamps in the middle of the Everglades, an ecologically important subtropical wetland. In the stifling summer heat, rife with mosquitoes, we manage to advance only a few metres into the compound when, as expected, a guard in a lorry blocks our way. We hear sounds coming from a small canal next to the compound. We wonder whether it's fish, snakes, or the hundreds of alligators that roam the wetland. |
