'Alligator Alcatraz' T-shirts, hats being sold by Florida GOP. What to know about new merch

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"Alligator Alcatraz" will host its first detainees by July 1, Gov. Ron DeSantis said in an interview on Fox News on June 27, just over a week after State Attorney General James Uthmeier posted the first video proposing an immigrant detention center in the Florida Everglades.

But you can get "Alligator Alcatraz" merch now.

The Florida GOP announced the gator-themed T-shirts, hats and can koozies in a fundraising notice sent to supporters, according to Scripps reporter Forrest Saunders. The items are prominently featured at the party's online store.

"The feds have greenlit Alligator Alcatraz — Florida's gator-guarded, python-patrolled prison for illegal aliens who thought they could game the system," the message read. "Surrounded by miles of swamp and bloodthirsty wildlife, this ain't no vacation spot. It's a one-way ticket to regret for criminals who'll wish they'd self-deported."

DeSantis has said the facility will take pressure off local jails and prisons from all the undocumented immigrants the state and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) department are arresting. Immigration rights activists and environmental groups have objected to the plan as unnecessarily cruel to the detainees and dangerous to the local protected Everglades wetlands.

Rapid, attention-getting, current events-related merch is commonplace in politics. After Trump was arrested in Georgia in 2023 on charges alleging he tried to overturn the 2020 election results, t-shirts with his mug shot were quickly produced.

Recently NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said "daddy has to sometimes use strong language" and Trump supporters seized on the slogan, with a video of Trump set to "Hey Daddy (Daddy's Home)" by Usher released and "daddy" t-shirts from The Trump War Room, run by Trump's campaign operation.

What is Alligator Alcatraz?

On June 19, Uthmeier posted a video to X suggesting that the "virtually abandoned" Miami-Dade Collier Training and Transition Airport, a 39-square-mile airport facility in the Everglades with a 10,500-foot runway, could be easily converted into a temporary immigrant detention center to aid in Florida's efforts to locate and deport "criminal aliens."

"I call it Alligator Alcatraz," he said, over a pounding rock beat. "It’s (sic) 30 square-mile-area is completely surrounded by the Everglades. It presents an efficient low-cost opportunity to build a temporary detention facility because you don’t need to invest that much in the perimeter. People get out, there’s not much waiting for 'em other than alligators and pythons.

"Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide," he added.

Within days, trucks were seen bringing in materials, the Department of Homeland Security gave its approval and said FEMA money would be used to help fund it, and the governor's office announced the state would use emergency powers to take control of the land away from Miami-Dade County.

"This is gonna be able to have more than 3,000 illegals, can be processed through here," the governor told "Fox and Friends" co-host Steve Doocy as he showed off construction at the facility. "We've got a massive runway right behind us where any of the federal assets, if they wanna fly these people back to their own country, they can do it one-stop-shop."

The move comes as both DeSantis and the Trump administration ramp up efforts to seize and deport undocumented immigrants in Florida and across the country, and weeks after President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies to reopen the original infamous Alcatraz, long a San Francisco tourist attraction, to "house America’s most ruthless and violent offenders."

Uthmeier told Newsmax's Carl Higbie that he'd like to have 5,000 beds "up and running" by the end of July.

On June 26, DeSantis said the state is also looking at another site at Camp Blanding, southwest of Jacksonville, as well.

Where is 'Alligator Alcatraz' in Florida?

The "Alligator Alcatraz" facility is in Ochopee, Florida, just north of Everglades National Park and about 36 miles west of the Miami business district, CNN reported.

According to the Miami International Airport, the Dade-Collier Airport is used as a training facility for "commercial pilots, private training, and a small number of military touch-and-goes."

It's also around the ancestral homelands of the Miccosukee and Seminole Tribe of Florida. Tribal members have denounced the development of detainment camps on indigenous land.

The facility was constructed in 1968 and originally known as the Everglades Jetport, according to the National Park Service, before an environmental study and activist protests killed the plan.

In 1974, President Gerald Ford established Big Cypress National Preserve in the area, the nation's first national preserve. The Alligator Alcatraz site is about six miles from Big Cypress National Preserve.