MIAMI — The latest plan by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to crack down on undocumented immigrants would involve emergency construction of a 1,000-bed detention center deep in the Everglades on swampy land owned by Miami-Dade County. On Monday, the county’s Democratic mayor attempted to slow the state’s efforts on the controversial idea.

Without explicitly opposing the overall concept, Mayor Daniella Levine Cava ticked off a string of barriers to the idea being pushed by both DeSantis and his former top aide, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, who has branded the proposed facility as “Alligator Alcatraz” for its remote location.

“Due to the location of this parcel in a critical area, the conveyance of this parcel requires considerable review and due diligence,” Levine Cava wrote in a Monday letter to Kevin Guthrie, the state’s emergency management director under DeSantis. It “is also imperative that we fully understand the scope and scale of the proposed use of the site and what will be developed, as the impacts to the Everglades ecosystem could be devastating.”

The site, a largely idle landing strip about 40 miles west of Miami International Airport, has been the subject of multiple development fights before. Each time, environmental groups warned of devastating consequences for the Everglades, and the proposals fizzled. The biggest fight was in the late 1960s when environmental groups — led by Marjory Stoneman Douglas — helped squash plans to build the world’s largest airport at the site, known as the Everglades Jetport. The federal government nixed the plan after just one runway was built.

This time, environmental groups are sharing the same warnings about the potential for a state detention center on the 17,000-acre Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, which sits so far west it’s partially in Collier County.

“We fought this 55 years ago, the development of this site,” said Eve Samples, executive director of the Friends of the Everglades advocacy group. It was a really damaging idea then. It remains an extremely dangerous idea.”

Now environmental groups are facing off against the DeSantis administration, which is citing the governor’s own emergency orders tied to immigration to justify a quick acquisition and development timeline for the land just north of the Tamiami Trail road that connects Miami-Dade with Collier.

In a social media post last week with a video celebrating the site’s potential to detain people caught up in the current federal immigration crackdown, Uthmeier called the site “the one-stop shop to carry out President Trump’s mass deportation agenda.” He said Monday the plan has the backing of the Trump administration and could be operating this summer.

Before DeSantis appointed him attorney general in February, Uthmeier served as the governor’s chief of staff.

The Miami Herald last week asked Uthmeier’s office to provide information on how much the detention center would cost, who would be tasked with building the facility and what the Trump administration’s response had been to the idea. The office did not respond.

On Saturday, Guthrie’s office emailed both Miami-Dade County and Collier County proposed terms for purchasing the site for $20 million.

The letter cited multiple emergency orders signed by DeSantis during the administration of President Joe Biden waiving state purchasing rules in order to address what the governor termed as an emergency caused by an influx of undocumented immigrants to the United States.

“The Division intends to work collaboratively with both Miami-Dade and Collier Counties to complete the transaction in an expedient manner to meet the needs of this emergency,” Guthrie wrote.

In her letter, Levine Cava suggested the governor’s administration is not waiting for the county’s green light to start work.

“I understand there is an intention to begin work on the site as early as Monday,” she wrote. “There has not been sufficient time to fully discuss these matters, and we thank you for your attention to these concerns given the rapid pace of the state’s effort.”

In an interview Monday, Uthmeier said the federal government had “approved” the state’s immigration detention facility plan in the abandoned airfield. The state has started construction, Uthmeier said in the interview with Benny Johnson, a conservative social media personality.

“It will be open the first week in July,” he said. “We will have some light infrastructure, a lot of heavy duty tent facilities and trailer facilities. We don’t need to build a lot of brick and mortar.”

Uthmeier said the state will be able to hold up to 5,000 detained migrants under its immigration detention plans, which include the facility nicknamed Alligator Alcatraz. It is unclear whether other state-run immigration detention facilities have been approved as of Monday. Earlier this year, the state proposed building a temporary detention center in Camp Blanding in North Florida.

The state did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.

Ownership details of the full site are not entirely clear. Appraisals of the land conducted for Miami-Dade’s Aviation Department before the DeSantis proposal lists Miami-Dade as the owner of 27 square miles on the site, while Uthmeier describes the land targeted for the detention center as having 39 square miles.

In her letter to Guthrie, Levine Cava cited a gap between the offered purchase price of $20 million and what Miami-Dade thinks the land is worth. A county appraisal dated May 25 listed the value of the county land on the site, which sits within the Big Cypress National Preserve, at $160 million.

The county appraisal also lays out development challenges for the property, which it describes as almost entirely wetlands.

“The property is within an environmentally sensitive freshwater wetland ecosystem and ecologically significant wildlife habitat, which impose constraints and burdens on the use of the property,” the report read. “The land in Miami-Dade County is designated Environmentally Protected Parks which is a designation comprising environmentally sensitive land and water areas within the Big Cypress National Preserve.”

The plan is already sparking protests. Several hundred people gathered outside the gates of the property Sunday morning to decry the transformation of the Everglades property into “Alligator Alcatraz.” They hoisted signs declaring “ICE melts in the Everglades” and “No airports, no rock mine, no prisons! Only Everglades.”

Betty Osceola, a Miccosukee tribe member and one of the organizers of the protest, said supporters of the detention center keep incorrectly calling the Everglades a deserted wasteland.

“I live out there. Other tribal families live out there,” she said.

Osceola remembers the massive fight in the 1960s over the property and said she attended meetings to translate for her mother and other Miccosukee elders.

“I’m just very upset that we’re having to fight this all over again,” she said. “When the reserve was established and this was stopped, we thought we’d never have to fight the use of this airport again.”

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