President Trump toured “Alligator Alcatraz” on Tuesday, a new migrant detention facility situated at a remote site in the Florida Everglades.
The facility, at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport inside the Big Cypress National Preserve, will house up to 5,000 beds to serve as a processing point for migrants who will be deported.
The facility is surrounded by “dangerous wildlife and unforgiving terrain,” the White House said, making the potential for escape difficult.
“We have a lot of bodyguards and a lot of cops in the form of alligators. You don’t have to pay them so much,” Trump told reporters as he toured the facility with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
“I wouldn’t want to run through the Everglades for long. We’ll keep people where they’re supposed to be,” Trump added.
DeSantis called the facility a “model” for other states.
Trump praised DeSantis, his one-time rival for the GOP presidential nomination.
“You’re my friend, you’ll always be my friend, and we may have some skirmishes even in the future, I doubt it, but we’ll always come back because we have blood that seems to match pretty well,” Trump said. “We have a relationship that has been a strong one for a very long time and I appreciate it.”
The Miami Herald has a profile of the citizens who live near the site in the Everglades.
MEANWHILE…
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Tuesday blamed Trump’s tariffs for the pair’s standoff over interest rates, saying he likely would have lowered rates already if not for forecasts of economic shock from the trade war.
When asked if Trump’s tariffs held up the Fed’s plan to cut interest rates, Powell responded: “I think that’s right.”
“We went on hold when we saw the size of the tariffs. … All inflation forecasts for the United States went up materially as a consequence of the tariffs,” Powell said at a central banking conference in Portugal.
The U.S. has so far avoided the forecasted inflation, although Powell said he’s expecting to see higher inflation over the summer. The Fed expects to lower rates later this year, Powell said.
Trump has been publicly railing against Powell, accusing him of playing politics by lowering rates while former President Biden was in office.
ELSEWHERE…
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has “officially cease[d] to implement foreign assistance,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Tuesday.
In a Substack post, Rubio said USAID had failed its central mission of promoting America’s interests abroad and instead created “a globe-spanning NGO industrial complex at taxpayer expense.”
“This era of government-sanctioned inefficiency has officially come to an end,” Rubio wrote.
“Under the Trump Administration, we will finally have a foreign funding mission in America that prioritizes our national interests,” he added.
U.S. foreign assistance programs will now be run through the State Department.
Former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama decried the shuttering of the agency, which had been an early target of Elon Musk’s efforts to root out government waste and fraud through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Bush said USAID had saved millions of lives through its philanthropic missions.
“Is it in our national interests that 25 million people who would have died now live?” Bush asked. “I think it is, and so do you.”
Obama called the shuttering of the agency a “colossal mistake.”
“Gutting USAID is a travesty, and it’s a tragedy,” Obama said.
“It’s some of the most important work happening anywhere in the world,” he added.
