The Miccosukee Tribe is pushing back against a state-backed proposal to build a high-security detention center in Big Cypress, warning the plan would jeopardize sacred lands and threaten the cultural integrity of one of Florida’s most historically significant Indigenous territories.

Tribal officials said the proposed facility, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz”, would sit just off the Tamiami Trail, a stretch of land still home to 19 traditional Miccosukee and Seminole villages. The area includes the federally recognized Miccosukee Reserved Area and the Tribe’s Water Conservation Area 3-A, which leaders say are vital to their way of life.

“Rather than Miccosukee homelands being an uninhabited wasteland for alligators and pythons, as some have suggested, the Big Cypress is the Tribe’s traditional homelands. The landscape has protected the Miccosukee and Seminole people for generations,” said Miccosukee Tribe Chairman Talbert Cypress. “The Miccosukee Tribe is opposed to the use of our ancestral lands in Big Cypress as a detention facility.”

The facility would be located at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport near Big Cypress National Preserve and could house up to 5,000 detainees in tents and trailers. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has described the site as cost-effective and secure, with the surrounding swamp and wildlife serving as a natural barrier. The project is backed by federal emergency shelter funding and could be operational within weeks.