Environmental groups, immigration advocates and Native Americans decry idea to set up the outdoor detention camp

Environmental groups, immigration rights activists and a Native American tribe have decried the construction of a harsh outdoor migrant detention camp in the Florida Everglades billed by state officials as “Alligator Alcatraz”.

Crews began preparing the facility at a remote, largely disused training airfield this week in support of the Trump administration’s aggressive goal of arresting and incarcerating 3,000 undocumented migrants every day.

It is among a number of controversial new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) jails appearing around the country as the number of detentions by the agency surges dramatically.