Who says Ron DeSantis does not have a sense of humour? Last year, the Florida governor was Donald Trump’s favourite whipping boy, verbally bludgeoned and outsmarted during his insipid run for the Republican presidential nomination.
Now, he is virtually best in class, as he showed when he took a Fox News host around his pride and joy: Alligator Alcatraz.
What was a seldom-used air strip about 90km into the Everglades west of Miami City has, in jig time, been transformed into an immigration processing centre.
It will act as the final stop for undocumented people – or “illegals” as is the official term of the Republican administration – before they are flown back to wherever they came from – or the next closest thing.
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DeSantis ditched the suit and wore a black shirt and shades, going for detention centre chic as he hosted his tour. The curious thing is that this latest system of cost-effective cruelty seemed to have liberated the Floridian from his staggeringly wooden campaigning persona.
In the swampy Ochopee heat, he was positively charming as he showed Steve Doocy around the centre. He made sure to point out that there will be air-conditioning, sanitary facilities, food and all of that good stuff.
“When you want to have deportation of illegal aliens there’s a process the DHS [department of homeland security] has to go through to vet, to process, to stage ‘em for removal,” he said. “We’ve got jails and our sheriffs and police are working and the state of Florida is all in on president [Donald] Trump’s measure. But that’s not enough- there needs to be more ability to intake and then deport. This answers that.”
There may be a kind of brutal rationale behind the system but the giveaway was contained within the casual differentiating phrase: “‘em”.
DeSantis said that about “750,000 illegals” have already received deportation orders from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) across the country. About 150,000 are in Florida and it is impossible to use the regular prisons as they are needed for “non-illegals, as they commit crimes too.”
But the unique selling point of the Everglades centre is that wild nature will keep ‘em penned in.
“This is as secure as it gets,” De Santis said triumphantly.
“If a criminal alien were to escape from here somehow, and I don’t think they will, you’ve got nowhere to go. What are you going to do? Trudge through the swamp and dodge alligators just to get through 50 or 60 miles back to civilisation? All you need is a little bus to move ‘em about 2,000 feet that way. They get on a plane and they’re gone.”
And it’s more than just alligators – the area is the natural habitat of panthers, bobcats and other terrifying wildlife.
“I love the whole concept,” purred Laura Ingraham when De Santis appeared on her show while explaining it to her viewers.
“It’s this new migrant detention centre in the Everglades- as long as the Everglades aren’t touched! Cos I love them too.”
The most dismal aspect of the entire enterprise is the undisguised and unashamed gleefulness with which key administration officials and its broadcast echo chambers discuss the mass deportation policy.
It’s as if the whole thing is a gas, reminiscent of a famous James Bond scene. Roger Moore, marooned on a tiny bank in an alligator swamp while attired in a Savile Row suit, adjusts his tie to acknowledge his sketchy predicament. He then waits until the gathering reptiles align and nimbly hopscotches across their scaly backs to safety.
It was one of the most notorious stunt scenes in Hollywood history; none of the regular teams would take it on so the alligator park owner did it himself.
The human fear and awe of alligators, with their weird combination of sleepiness and murderous intent, is universal. And the imaginative optics feed into the Republican delight at the prospect of these reptiles standing as unpaid sentries to the thousands of desperate people whose final experience of the US will be a few nights in a tent in the Everglades.
It’s not enough to merely haul them out of their subterranean lives – as has happened with Madonna Kashanian, a 64-year-old Iranian woman who had lived in New Orleans for 47 years before being lifted by Ice while gardening outside her house.
This is hardly the profile of the rampaging murderous immigrants Trump campaigned on, nor the dog-eating outsiders vice-president JD Vance warned against.
But no matter. You have the paper work, or you don’t. The border policy has been the great, uncomplicated success story of Trump’s second term. He promised to stop the rush of undocumented people across the southern border and his team has done just that.
They have targeted criminal gangs and operatives and justifiably claim to have made US streets safer. Tom Homan, the “Border Tzar”, has made it clear that this is just a numbers game. There is little room for human empathy.
But the ill-disguised pleasure derived at inflicting maximum cruelty and humiliation on tens of thousands of people, who at the very least are enduring a kind of private despair, will generate a backlash.
It could become the issue to bite the Trump administration back.
