READ: Protest: https://www.dailynews.com/2025/06/26/florida-alcatraz-protest/
OP-ED (excerpt)
The Florida Everglades have been home to the Seminole Tribe of Florida and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida for centuries. Both federally recognized tribes oppose the facility’s location, but their governments were never consulted.
Betty Osceola, an elder of the Miccosukee Tribe and co-owner of Buffalo Tiger Airboats that operates in the Everglades, is opposed to the detention center. With a bullhorn in her hand, she led a group of protesters from her tribe and environmental organizations who protested in late June along U.S. Highway 41. One protester carried a sign that read: “Alligator Alcatraz is Florida’s Auschwitz.”
“I have serious concerns about the environmental damage,” Osceola told local reporters. “It’s disrupting the circle of life that these animals need.”
She fears the government’s claim that the facility is temporary; she believes it will operate for years.
On July 2, 2025, the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma joined the Florida tribes in protesting the new detention center. The tribe says the center insults their ancestral homeland and threatens the ecosystem.
Chief Lewis Johnson of the Oklahoma Seminole Nation said that Indigenous lands are not vacant but vital to their people.
"When we see these people that come in and want to oppress people of brown skin essentially and tell them they’re illegals, that doesn’t line up with us, because we don’t have this ideology of citizenship. No one should be illegal, because all this land has been stolen from us,” Johnson said.
Tribal governments were not consulted. Environmental warnings were ignored. This detention center isn't just bad policy — it's an affront to Native American treaty rights and trust obligations. South Florida's tribes deserve partnership, not more broken promises.
And migrants deserve compassion, not cages. - Levi Rickert
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