The Trump administration is planning to potentially plunge millions of American tax dollars into a new anti-immigrant pet project in Florida that sounds like it was pulled from medieval times.

You may have heard of the so-called Alligator Alcatraz being constructed in the Everglades. If not, it’s basically an old airfield that Florida Republicans are turning into a tent-filled detention facility for immigrants — and which will be surrounded by fearsome reptiles.

As The New York Times reports:

One might say using FEMA money for such a project — after Trump has denied such aid for residents in Democratic-led states — is cruel and deranged.

As the administration also withholds congressionally authorized funding for everything from to cancer research to efforts against child sex traffickingthis moat … thing … is apparently a more worthy use of our tax dollars. The plan is part of an effort to help the administration ramp up its mass deportation agenda, which has ensnared American citizens and is largely targeting people with no criminal convictions to speak of — contradicting Trump’s campaign rhetoric that his deportations would target hardened criminals.

One might say using FEMA money for such a project — after Trump has denied such aid for residents in Democratic-led states — is cruel and deranged.

As the Times noted, Trump repeatedly floated the idea of building a border moat filled with alligators or snakes during his first term. The plan also sounds quite similar to a plan he floated for homeless people back in 2022which he conceded would be controversial but said would involve “high-quality tents” on “large parcels of inexpensive land in the outer reaches of the cities.”

Unlike in 2019, when Trump’s administration considered using FEMA money for another archaic anti-immigrant project — a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border — the president’s wish for medieval-style immigration enforcement seems like it’s on the verge of becoming reality in this case.

It’s worth noting, though, that the administration already is facing backlash over reportedly inhumane conditions being foisted on immigrants in detention centers across the country. And it seems more than a little presumptuous to think treatment will be much better in what effectively is a jail for immigrants encircled by snakes and alligators.

Ja’han Jones

Ja’han Jones is an BLN opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog. He is a futurist and multimedia producer focused on culture and politics. His previous projects include “Black Hair Defined” and the “Black Obituary Project.”

While national attention has moved away from Los Angeles, the federal government still has 700 Marines and more than 4,000 National Guard troops stationed there as part of Donald Trump and Stephen Miller’s militarized deportation program.

Of course, it is not just California. According to a new analysis from the libertarian Cato Institute, Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests of migrants with no criminal history are up more than 1,000% when compared to the first year of Trump’s first term.

Every day, we are seeing stories of immigration enforcement that truly shock the conscience, as armed, masked agents rolling up to regular folks who have not been convicted or even accused of serious crimes— folks who, in many cases, are just trying to do their jobs. Often, these unidentified agents detain them as onlookers cry out for them to stop.

Every day, we are seeing stories of immigration enforcement that truly shock the conscience.

One recent example from the city of Santa Ana, California, involved a landscaper named Narciso Barranco, an undocumented man with no criminal record who has lived and worked in the U.S. for decades. He has three sons, all of whom are either active-duty or veterans of the Marine Corps.

Over the weekend, Barranco was doing what he does every Saturday: working. Video of the encounter shows Barranco being approached by armed, unidentified masked men while he was cutting the grass at an IHOP restaurant. Frightened, Barranco fled, still holding his weed-whacker. The agents then caught up with him, sprayed him in the face with something, wrestled him to the ground and started beating him.

The Department of Homeland Security alleges Barranco assaulted agents with his weed-whacker, but eyewitnesses, including the manager of that IHOP, say that’s not what they saw. “He was protecting himself,” Guilermo Villarreal told KNBC, the local NBC News affiliate. “He’s not attacking [anybody]. They were beating him so hard.”

According to Barranco’s family, he is currently being detained in an L.A. detention center. One of Barranco’s sons spoke to KNBC about what his father experienced:

“In the video, it appears his shoulder was dislocated, and he got sprayed with mace in his eyes at, like, a very close distance,” said Alejandro Barranco, a Marine veteran. “And I asked him about it, and he just broke down and said his shoulder was hurt, it hurt a lot. And then he said his eyes burn and he was thirsty, he was hungry.”

It was once generally understood that family members of active-duty service members should be protected from these kinds of deportations. But now it appears the Trump administration is just indiscriminately deporting anyone they want.

Back in April, federal immigration enforcement arrested the wife of an active-duty Coast Guardsman over an expired work visa as the couple was preparing to move into their on-base housing in Florida. In March, the wife of an Army sergeant, a woman named Shirly Guardado, who had filed paperwork for protected status, was deported by immigration officials in Texas.

According to Guardado’s family, who spoke with The War Horse, a nonprofit news organization, she “got a strange phone call at work. Some sort of public safety officer had dialed her office and wanted her to come outside to talk.”

His father’s treatment has left Alejandro Barranco feeling “betrayed” by the country he served.

“In the parking lot, three men in plainclothes identified themselves as Department of Public Safety officers,” her family alleges. “Shirly approached, they said her car had been involved in an accident. But when she got close, they grabbed her and handcuffed her, telling her they were ICE agents.”

These kinds of indiscriminate deportations of people who have not been convicted of any crime are morally destructive in their own right, but it is especially appalling for this White House, which claims to stand up for troops and veterans while deporting their loved ones.

His father’s treatment has left Alejandro Barranco feeling “betrayed” by the country he served. “These are my people, and then, my dad is also my people, the community is my people, the military is my people,” he told KNBC. “At the end of the day, it’s like my people against my people, I just — I don’t know. I feel hurt.”