The Young GOPer Behind “Alligator Alcatraz” Is the Dark Future of MAGA
James Uthmeier is the real brains behind this notorious migrant detention camp in the Everglades. The more barbarities that emerge, the brighter his star will no doubt shine.
The other day, Stephen Miller went on Fox News and offered a plea that got surprisingly little attention given its highly toxic and unnerving implications. Miller urged politicians in GOP-run states to build their own versions of “Alligator Alcatraz,” the state-run immigration detention facility that officials just opened in the Florida Everglades.
“We want every governor of a red state, and if you are watching tonight: pick up the phone, call DHS, work with us to build facilities in your state,” Miller said, in a reference to the Department of Homeland Security. Critically, Miller added, such states could then work with the federal government by supplying much-needed detention beds, helping President Trump “get the illegals out.”
Keep all that in mind as we introduce you to one James Uthmeier.
Uthmeier, the attorney general of Florida and a longtime ally of Governor Ron DeSantis, is widely described in the state as the brains behind “Alligator Alcatraz.” Peter Schorsch, the publisher of Florida Politics, sums him up this way: “In Uthmeier, DeSantis found his own Stephen Miller.”
Uthmeier is indeed a homegrown Florida version of Miller: Only 37 years old, he brings great precociousness to the jailing of migrants. Like Miller, he is obscure and little-known relative to the influence he’s amassing. Also like Miller, he is fluent in MAGA’s reliance on the spectacle of inhumanity and barbarism.
“You don’t need to invest that much in the perimeter,” Uthmeier said of “Alligator Alcatraz” in a slick video he recently narrated about the complex, which featured heavy-metal guitar riffs right out of a combat-cosplay video game. “People get out, there’s not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons. Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.”
Any migrant who dares escape just might get devoured alive by an animal—one animal eating another. Dehumanization is so thrilling!
The real-world “Alligator Alcatraz” is already gaining notoriety for its very real cruelties. After Democratic lawmakers visited over the weekend, they sharply denounced the scenes they’d witnessed of migrants packed into cages under inhumane conditions. Meanwhile, detainees and family members have sounded alarms about worm-infested food and blistering heat. And the Miami Heraldreports that an unnervingly large percentage of the detainees lack criminal convictions.
But Uthmeier is getting feted on Fox News and other right wing media for this new experiment in spite of such notorieties—or perhaps because of them. There’s good reason to think more red state politicians will seek to create their own versions of “Alligator Alcatraz” or get in on this action in other ways—and that more young Republican politicians will see it as a path to MAGA renown and glory.
For one thing, the money is now there. Buried in the big budget bill that Trump recently signed is a little-noticed provision that immigration advocates increasingly fear could fund more complexes like this one. It makes $3.5 billion available to “eligible states” and their agencies for numerous immigration-related purposes, including the “temporary detention of aliens.”
When Miller told GOP politicians to follow Uthmeier by collaborating with federal officials to develop new versions of “Alligator Alcatraz,” he was probably talking about this slush fund. State officials can try to tap into it for building out such facilities. “For Republican states across the country that want to copy the ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ model, this bill will give them that money,” immigration analyst Austin Kocher tells me.
What’s more, red state politicians are paying attention. Fox News contacted numerous gubernatorial offices to ask if they intend to take up Miller’s invitation. The responses were positive, with many eagerly touting plans for detention complexes. While it’s unclear if these will resemble “Alligator Alcatraz,” the underlying impulse is clear: Many red states want to expand state-run detention efforts. And again: The money is there.
This is a bad development. “Alligator Alcatraz” should not be the model for the future of migrant detention in much of the United States.
Here’s why. The facility is funded and operated by the state of Florida, but the state can use it to detain undocumented people under a federal program that allows ICE to authorize local law enforcement to carry out immigration crackdowns. That puts “Alligator Alcatraz” in a grey area: Local law enforcement agencies are using it to carry out Trump’s immigration detention agenda even as ICE does not run the facility.
Lauren-Brooke Eisen of the Brennan Center, who specializes in criminal justice, points to a toxic combination built into the idea of more versions of this arrangement. ICE detention is subject to federal oversight. But huge influxes of federal money for migrant detention—as in Trump’s new bill—could create new incentives for states to ramp up their own detention efforts. Yet because “Alligator Alcatraz” is a new experiment, she says, it’s unclear what sort of federal oversight future imitation efforts would receive, even if they get some federal money.
“What will access to counsel look like for detainees?” Eisen asks. “What will access to family members look like? It’s difficult to imagine state-run facilities where conditions and due process are prioritized.”
Illustrating the point, when a reporter recently asked ICE for comment on what’s going on inside “Alligator Alcatraz,” ICE said, well, it isn’t their facility. In other words, the federal government is not responsible for what happens inside those walls—even as Miller and Trump call on other states to build more of them.
Which brings us back to Uthmeier and the future of MAGA.
It’s easy to see Uthmeier and his “Alligator Alcatraz” becoming a model for other young Republicans seeking a route into MAGA celebrity. Consider his career trajectory: It’s fairly conventional establishment-Republican stuff. A native of Destin, a small beach city in the deep red Florida panhandle, he earned a law degree from Georgetown and then worked for the Commerce Department in the first Trump administration—and then for the ultra-establishment D.C. law firm Jones Day.
Uthmeier has also made appearances at the conservative Federalist Ssociety, which is as establishment-conservative as it gets. He joined DeSantis’s first administration as a senior legal adviser, and then got appointed as attorney general when the slot was vacated by the appointment of former AG Ashley Moody to now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s Senate seat.
All in all, it’s in some ways a conventional path to GOP success. In fact, Uthmeier actually has a track record of criticizing Trump in the past on things like Covid-19 and abortion. But J.D. Vance survived such heresies, and now, in the party that Trump remade, Uthmeier apparently recognizes that “Alligator Alcatraz” is his big ticket. It’s a reminder that in today’s GOP, the MAGA and older-line Republican establishments are bleeding into one another—and that getting attached to such an idea is a path to national MAGA stardom.
Put another way, in the cut-throat world of the MAGA attention economy, association with things like “Alligator Alcatraz” can carry enormous weight. It’s hard for people who don’t swim in MAGA’s rancid information currents to grasp, but when Trump recently toured the facility with DeSantis, it was a huge MAGA propaganda coup for the Florida governor (yes, he apparently still harbors national ambitions).
Indeed, one person who very much noticed this was apparently Uthmeier himself. According to one Florida operative in touch with Uthmeier’s staff, there’s considerable sensitivity in his inner circle over who is getting credit for “Alligator Alcatraz,” with some worrying that Uthmeier isn’t reaping enough of it.
Uthmeier needn’t worry, however. When Trump toured the facility, he said of Uthmeier: “That guy’s got a future.” In this, the MAGA God King himself gave a big boost to Uthmeier’s 2026 electoral bid to keep his appointed AG role, which will be a platform for even higher ambitions. And if more barbarities emerge from “Alligator Alcatraz,” as they surely will, his MAGA future will only get that much brighter.
July 15, 1834 The Spanish Inquisition, a centuries-long brutal effort by the Catholic Church to root out heresy, begun in 1481, was officially abolished by King Bonaparte. Spain’s King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella had chosen Catholicism as their religion and asked the pope to help purify the people of Spain. Many thousands were forced to convert, were tortured to encourage confession, or burned at the stake. Witch burning during the Inquisition More on the Inquisition
July 15, 1978 The Longest Walk, a peaceful transcontinental trek for Native American justice, which had begun with a few hundred departing Alcatraz Island, California, ended this day when they arrived in Washington, D.C. accompanied by 30,000 marchers. They were calling attention to the ongoing problems plaguing Indian communities throughout the Americas: lack of jobs, housing, health care, as well as dozens of pieces of legislation before Congress canceling treaty obligations of the U.S. government toward various Indian tribes. They submitted petitions signed by one-and-a-half million Americans to President Jimmy Carter. The Longest WalkZinn Project
That pesky thing called the US CONSTITUTION says that the people have a right to protest the government. The last ten or more years the federal government has been trying to restrain the rights of the people to protest or have their voices heard. This is another example. Hugs
DHS is urging law enforcement to treat even skateboarding and livestreaming as signs of violent intent during a protest, turning everyday behavior into a pretext for police action.
The Department of Homeland Security is urging local police to consider a wide range of protest activity as violent tactics, including mundane acts like riding a bike or livestreaming a police encounter, WIRED has learned.
Threat bulletins issued during last month’s “No Kings” protests warn that the US government’s aggressive immigration raids are almost certain to accelerate domestic unrest, with DHS saying there’s a “high likeliness” more Americans will soon turn against the agency, which could trigger confrontations near federal sites.
Blaming intense media coverage and backlash to the US military deployment in Los Angeles, DHS expects the demonstrations to “continue and grow across the nation” as protesters focused on other issues shift to immigration, following a broad “embracement of anti-ICE messaging.”
The bulletins—first obtained by the national security nonprofit Property of the People through public records requests—warn that officers could face assaults with fireworks and improvised weapons: paint-filled fire extinguishers, smoke grenades, and projectiles like bottles and rocks.
At the same time, the guidance urges officers to consider a range of nonviolent behavior and common protest gear—like masks, flashlights, and cameras—as potential precursors to violence, telling officers to prepare “from the point of view of an adversary.”
Protesters on bicycles, skateboards, or even “on foot” are framed as potential “scouts” conducting reconnaissance or searching for “items to be used as weapons.” Livestreaming is listed alongside “doxxing” as a “tactic” for “threatening” police. Online posters are cast as ideological recruiters—or as participants in “surveillance sharing.”
One list of “violent tactics” shared by the Los Angeles–based Joint Regional Intelligence Center—part of a post-9/11 fusion network—includes both protesters’ attempts to avoid identification and efforts to identify police. The memo also alleges that face recognition, normally a tool of law enforcement, was used against officers.
Vera Eidelman, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, says the government has no business treating constitutionally protected activities—like observing or documenting police—as threats.
DHS did not respond to a request for comment.
“Exercising those rights shouldn’t be justification for adverse action or suspicion by the government,” Eidelman says. Labeling something as harmless as skateboarding at a protest as a violent threat is “disturbing and dangerous,” she adds, and could “easily lead to excessive force against people who are simply exercising their First Amendment rights.”
“The DHS report repeatedly conflates basic protest, organizing, and journalism with terroristic violence, thereby justifying ever more authoritarian measures by law enforcement,” says Ryan Shapiro, executive director of Property of the People. “It should be sobering, if unsurprising, that the Trump regime’s response to mass criticism of its police state tactics is to escalate those tactics.”
Fusion centers like JRIC play a central role in how police understand protest movements. The intelligence they produce is rapidly disseminated and draws heavily on open-source data. It often reflects broad, risk-averse assumptions and includes fragmentary and unverified information. In the absence of concrete threats, bulletins often turn to ideological language and social media activity as evidence of emerging risks, even when tied to lawful expression.
DHS’s risk-based approach reflects a broader shift in US law enforcement shaped by post-9/11 security priorities—one that elevates perceived intent over demonstrable wrongdoing and uses behavior cues, affiliations, and other potentially predictive indicators to justify early intervention and expanded surveillance.
A year ago, DHS warned that immigration-related grievances were driving a spike in threats against judges, migrants, and law enforcement, predicting that new laws and high-profile crackdowns would further radicalize individuals. In February, another fusion center reported renewed calls for violence against police and government officials, citing backlash to perceived federal overreach and identifying then-upcoming protests and court rulings as likely triggers.
At times, the sprawling predictions may appear prescient, echoing real-world flashpoints: In Alvarado, Texas, an alleged coordinated ambush at a detention center this week drew ICE agents out with fireworks before gunfire erupted on July 4, leaving a police officer shot in the neck. (Nearly a dozen arrests have been made, at least 10 on charges of attempted murder.)
In advance of protests, agencies increasingly rely on intelligence forecasting to identify groups seen as ideologically subversive or tactically unpredictable. Demonstrators labeled “transgressive” may be monitored, detained without charges, or met with force.
Social movement scholars widely recognize the introduction of preemptive protest policing as a departure from late-20th century approaches that prioritized de-escalation, communication, and facilitation. In its place, authorities have increasingly emphasized control of demonstrations through early intervention, surveillance, and disruption—monitoring organizers, restricting public space, and responding proactively based on perceived risks rather than actual conduct.
Infrastructure initially designed to combat terrorism now often serves to monitor street-level protests, with virtual investigations units targeting demonstrators for scrutiny based on online expression. Fusion centers, funded through DHS grants, have increasingly issued bulletins flagging protest slogans, references to police brutality, and solidarity events as signs of possible violence—disseminating these assessments to law enforcement absent clear evidence of criminal intent.
Surveillance of protesters has included the construction of dossiers (known as “baseball cards”) with analysts using high-tech tools to compile subjects’ social media posts, affiliations, personal networks, and public statements critical of government policy.
Obtained exclusively by WIRED, a DHS dossier on Mahmoud Khalil, the former Columbia graduate student and anti-war activist, shows that analysts drew information from Canary Mission, a shadowy blacklist that anonymously profiles critics of Israeli military action and supporters of Palestinian rights.
In federal court Wednesday, a senior DHS official acknowledged that material from Canary Mission had been used to compile more than 100 dossiers on students and scholars, despite the site’s ideological slant, mysterious funding, and unverifiable sourcing.
Threat bulletins can also prime officers to anticipate conflict, shaping their posture and decisions on the ground. In the wake of violent 2020 protests, the San Jose Police Department in California cited the “numerous intelligence bulletins” it received from its local regional fusion center, DHS, and the FBI, among others, as central to understanding “the mindset of the officers in the days leading up to and throughout the civil unrest.”
Specific bulletins cited by the SJPD—whose protest response prompted a $620,000 settlement this month—framed the demonstrations as possible cover for “domestic terrorists,” warned of opportunistic attacks on law enforcement and promoted an “unconfirmed report” of U-Haul vans purportedly being used to ferry weapons and explosives.
Subsequent reporting in the wake of BlueLeaks—a 269-gigabyte dump of internal police documents obtained by a source identifying as the hacktivist group Anonymous and published by transparency group Distributed Denial of Secrets—found federal bulletins riddled with unverified claims, vague threat language, and outright misinformation, including alerts about a parody website that supposedly paid protesters and accepted bitcoin to set cars on fire, despite a clear banner labeling the site “FAKE.”
Threat alerts—unclassified and routinely accessible to the press—can help law enforcement shape public perception of protests before they begin, laying the groundwork to legitimize aggressive police responses. Unverified DHS warnings about domestic terrorists infiltrating demonstrations in 2020, publicly echoed by the agency’s acting secretary on Twitter, were widely circulated and amplified in media coverage.
Americans are generally opposed to aggressive protest crackdowns, but when they do support them, fear is often the driving force. Experimental research suggests that support for the use of coercive tactics hinges less on what protesters actually do than on how they’re portrayed—by officials, the media, and through racial and ideological frames.
Dell Cameron is an investigative reporter from Texas covering privacy and national security. He’s the recipient of multiple Society of Professional Journalists awards and is co-recipient of an Edward R. Murrow Award for Investigative Reporting. Previously, he was a senior reporter at Gizmodo and a staff writer for the Daily … Read More
One voice was yelling he was a US citizen. The conditions are horrible. They get their drinking water from the toilet. Maxwell Frost is a progressive treasure. Hugs
We did not record a podcast last week because Donna was traveling to Austin, where her family was celebrating Fourth of July AND the arrival of a new baby (her grand-niece!).
She expected hot, humid weather. What she got was four days of torrential rain, and the specter of over one hundred deaths from flooding in the nearby hill counties – including children at a sleep away camp that was overcome by the deluge.
One week later, this tragedy is ongoing. People are wondering how much DOGE’s cuts to the National Weather Service and NOAA factored into it. Journalist Marisa Kabas has reported that as of Monday, only 86 FEMA employees were on the ground in Texas (they usually deploy hundreds of people to disaster zones like this). “We are doing a lot less than normal,” a FEMA staffer told her.
No shit.
In the meantime, $450 million from FEMA’s budget has been allocated to that concentration camp in the swamps of Florida. And Trump’s big, ugly budget bill allocates billions to expand ICE and build more “detention centers” throughout the country.
ICE continues to terrorize immigrant communities, kidnapping law-abiding parents, gardeners, day laborers, and others who just happen to have brown skin (including US citizens).Donna returned home to Los Angeles in time for a show of military cosplay in MacArthur Park. No one got hurt in that one – but it felt like a dress rehearsal for something worse.
We talked about that and more in this week’s podcast.
We are living through history and it really sucks. Aliza says that the best way to deal with the continual onslaught of terrible events is to DO something. Anything. Volunteer in the community. Participate in events. Write postcards for candidates, donate to good causes.
And allow yourself the down time you need to muster up the energy to do it again.
We talked about some of the everyday heroes who are helping us all muster through this.
Like Joshua Aaron, the developer of the ICEBlock app that alerts people of ICE activity in their area. (Currently just for iPhones; we are anxiously awaiting news that this app will become available to Android users.)
The ACLU has done heroic work for over a century. After recording this week’s podcast, we were dismayed to learn that their Mobile Justice app Aliza has relied upon for years is no longer available.
To ensure compliance with a growing number of consumer privacy laws and the ACLU’s own privacy policies and to minimize risk with surveillance technologies currently used by law enforcement, the national office has made the decision not to renew our contract with Quadrant 2, the vendor behind Mobile Justice, and shut down the app on February 28, 2025.
But the ACLU is still a source of valuable information. Here are a couple of pages that you may want to bookmark:
There are things you can do as a bystander, too. This Yahoo article talks about New York City, but much of it applies anywhere in the U.S. It’s completely legal to film an ICE encounter, and the article has great suggestions for how to narrate and what details to include. There is advice on how your video can help, but it’s also important not to post your videos online without the consent of the person being detained.
The National Immigrant Justice Center is just one of many organizations with so much information on how to handle encounters with ICE or DHS, whether you are the target or a bystander.
The coalition of anti-authoritarian groups that has risen since the start of this regime continue to organize. The next big nationwide gathering is “Good Trouble Lives On,” which will be held in honor of the late John Lewis, around the July 17 anniversary of his death. Find an event near you here.
And in case you’re one of those “DO SOMETHING” people who love to bash Democrats, remember that they ARE doing something. A LOT. If you want to know what, you should follow Ariella Elm on any of the socials. She makes posts like the ones below, and daily posts like this one that list the wins for democracy and actions all over the country that are helping stem the tide of fascism, and we need to thank and elevate these soldiers for democracy.
An especially brutal incident occurred at an SF immigration courthouse Tuesday morning, as protesters attempted to block an ICE SUV that was apparently transporting an arrested immigrant, and the SUV simply plowed its way through the demonstrators.
After Monday’s ICE military-style sweep through a near-empty park in Los Angeles, we wondered this morning if this was a harbinger of things to come. It did not take long to get an answer.
The incident happened at about 11:15 am Tuesday morning at SF Immigration Court at 100 Montgomery Street, where some 20 protesters were attempting to block the transport of an apparent immigrant in custody who was thrown into a black SUV. The SUV drove through the group of protesters, and per Mission Local, federal officers also “pointed their rifles, deployed pepper spray, and shoved people to the ground.”
Warning: The video of this incident contains substantial profanity.
These events are captured in the video above from Mission Local. It begins as your typical SF protest scene, with demonstrators trying to blockade and prevent ICE agents from getting inside the building. There is much skirmishing and shouting between the ICE agents and the protesters, with agents using batons to keep the protesters at bay. Around the 1:14 mark it appears that agents do get their suspect out of the building and into the SUV, at which point, some eight to ten protesters attempt to block the SUV.
The SUV starts inching forward, slowly at first, often stopping as agents try to pull the protesters off the front of the vehicle. Once many of the protesters are off, the vehicle picks up speed. Only one protester still clings to the front of the SUV, and then it really picks up speed. The protester flies off the hood, fellow demonstrators come to aid that person, and there’s another unsuccessful attempt to block the vehicle the next block up, before it speeds away.
The SF Standard has their own video of the incident, albeit from several stories above, seemingly from a Financial District office window.
Bar Association of San Francisco immigration attorney Milli Atkinson confirmed to Mission Local that one immigrant was arrested and detained during the incident. So that is disturbing.
But most disturbingly, have you ever seen such a high percentage of law enforcement officers with their faces covered in masks, with no badges or identifying information, and mostly not wearing anything (other than their vests) that resembles a legitimate uniform? If these are all indeed sworn ICE officers, there seems to be a paramilitary push toward concealing their identities, and some strangely loose new decorum in their uniform standards under the Trump administration.
Mission Local adds that one demonstrator was pepper-sprayed at Market and Montgomery streets, though was then restrained by other agents. One demonstrator reportedly yelled at him, “Your parents were immigrants, asshole.” That site also adds that another ICE agent (or someone appearing to be one) “pointed a matte black rifle at protestors and press, including this reporter,” and that “An SFPD officer stood by and watched from a distance.”
In their own writeup of the incident, the SF Standard spoke to the protester who appears to be the person who held on to the moving SUV’s hood long enough to be jostled off. “I was bleeding everywhere,” said that person, identifying herself only as Sorin. “They were brutal to those of us trying to exercise our rights and protect our community.”
I am watching Sam Seder interview a journalist from L.A. The news he is sharing is documented but not making national or local press across the nation. He told about the imposter caught dressed as an ICE agent who was looking to kidnap someone. He told about the conditions the prisoners of ICE are kept in. They are being held in the basement of the LA federal building with 20 people to a room with one bucket to use as a toilet. They are fed once a day a meal of crackers and water. He told about the people snatched off the street by ICE or bounty hunters that were found in a warehouse in San Diego but ICE denied they had anything to do with it. Several people have been held for ransom after being kidnapped by people dressed as ICE with no ID and masked. Below is the link. Hugs
27-Year-Old Hit With ‘Less-Lethal’ Munition Grapples With ‘Life-Changing’ Injury
DAILY MEMO: Bell Gardens Mayor Gets an ICE Agent’s Badge Number and More
DAILY MEMO: ICE Show at McArthur Park as We Pass The 30-day Mark and More
I watched the ICE militia that marched through this park to sow fear in the Latino population. 20 kids had minutes before been playing at the park when the chaperones got word of what ICE was going to do. The staff quickly ran the children to a building near the park and hid them. The children were traumatized. I will post the video on it tomorrow. Hugs
Heavily-Armed Federal Police In Armored Vehicles Target MacArthur Park
Scottie's Playtime 