I would like people to compare the “tough guy” speech given by the ICE person about removing child molesters and kidnappers, rescuing children from forced labor, the worst criminals, murders, making mom and pop safe with the four crimes they mentioned that of the dozens and dozens arrested were accused of. One guy was charged with fentanyl distribution, one was charged with trespass, a third was charged with driving without a license and refusing to show identification. Wow mom and pop are so much safer now that the worst of the worst are in detention with no due process. Let’s be clear, they are going after legal immigrants, they are going after those following the rules, they are showing up at places where these people are working and looking for work because the goal is to remove all the brown people. It is that simple, it is a white supremacy thing driven by racist like Stephen Miller who hates Spanish speaking people and those with brown skin. They held a US citizen veteran for three days with no due process and no explanation. Take a guess of his skin color? Brown? Great guess and correct. These gang thugs are not trying to make the US safer for anyone, they are determined to make it whiter. At the 5:21 mark ICE thugs abruptly stop their car in the middle of the street and with guns and tasers ready while masked and in no uniform they rush a woman who is a well known activist who has been openly filming them for weeks. This is an attempt to cause fear and stop people from viewing and reporting their actions. This is such a 1930s Hitler’s Germany moment in the US. And Vaush talks about how the nation if flooded with guns and these masked people with no uniforms rushing at people could be shot by people in reasonable fear for their lives as Roger also has been saying. Hugs
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.
Here is the reason for the post. The Department of Justice announced Thursday that its Civil Rights Division is investigating the state of Minnesota for possible hiring discrimination. What the current US government is trying to roll back all gains by minority groups since the 1960s. They started by making teaching the history of oppression of black people an attack on white people by making CRT a boogie man. Then came woke as the villain and save the children from the gays or anyone with a different lifestyle from the straight cis majority. Now it is DEI. The right has hammered on DEI even though most on the MAGA side couldn’t tell you what it means. The media on the right has tried to say any black person or any woman hired is not qualified and only got the job because they were a quota DEI hire. They see a black pilot and think DEI as in not qualified to fly better get off the plane as Charlie Kirk said on his show. They are trying to make the US a white straight cis ethnostate in the model of Russia with the white males clearly in charge. We must not let them destroy the melting pot mixture of different people and cultures that have made the US such a grand country. Plus the AG Bondi claims DEI is illegal but no law was passed by the congress? tRump seems to think if he says it or if he signs an executive order that makes it law. He is not a dictator yet. Hugs
The investigation represents one in a series of clashes between the state and Trump’s DOJ.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (left) and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (right) await the arrival of then-Vice President Kamala Harris at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on March 14, 2024. | Stephen Maturen/AFP via Getty Images
The Department of Justice announced Thursday that its Civil Rights Division is investigating the state of Minnesota for possible hiring discrimination, setting up another clash between the Trump administration and the state’s Democratic leadership.
The investigation hinges on a policy issued earlier this month by the Minnesota Department of Human Services mandating that hiring supervisors provide a “hiring justification when seeking to hire a non-underrepresented candidate,” according to a Thursday letter sent to Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison from Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.
Attorney General Pam Bondi’s DOJ has pursued an aggressive crackdown on states and universities that engage in affirmative action policies, opening similar investigations into Rhode Island and the University of California.
“Minnesotans deserve to have their state government employees hired based on merit, not based on illegal DEI,” Bondi said in a statement.
The statute specifies that the justifications are required for “nonaffirmative action hires,” the Minnesota Department of Human Services said in a statement defending its policy.
“The Minnesota Department of Human Services follows all state and federal hiring laws,” it said. “Justification of non-affirmative action hires for some vacancies has been required by state law since 1987.”
The White House has repeatedly clashed with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who has sharply criticized the president since running for vice president on the Democratic ticket in 2024. Ellison has also filed multiple lawsuits against the Trump administration seeking to block several of its policies, and the DOJ sued Minnesota last month to stop the state from providing in-state tuition for some undocumented students.
Trump also refused to call Walz after two Minnesota state lawmakers were shot in May, calling the governor “so whacked out.”
Walz’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and Ellison’s office declined to comment.
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
The Democratic Party leadership which is made up of all corporate democrats along the manner of Nancy Pelosi. The idea that a 33 year old Social Democrat like Bernie Sanders and AOC running NY City terrifies them. Behind the scenes they are trying hard to wing support to Andrew Cuomo who has been accused of being very corrupt instead of a guy who promised to do things that make life better for the working lower incomes. They are scared that the people will see that they have power and that government CAN work for them. The democratic leadership totally ignores the fact that Mamdomi raised enough money from small individual donor donations and refused corporate PACs and bribes. He is the future of the Democratic Party if the democrats ever want to win again. The videos of the man on the street getting greeted by everyone, he doesn’t put on airs but walks the streets and is like everyone else. Hugs
In a recent post I posted the news article from Axios about democratic members of congress needing to be more aggressive including being willing to get shot trying to inspect ICE facilities. It was not about wanting to cause violence nor about wanting to be shot. The article was about the perception that democratic leadership are too timid and scared to challenge the thuggish ICE and current administration. The video below goes over the article. Hugs
