PolitiFact | Gov. Ron DeSantis did not provide evidence showing how state agencies or officials determined the facility has zero environmental impact.

U.S. Democratic representatives characterized the state-run immigrant detention center in the Everglades as a cruel and wasteful political stunt following a guided tour Saturday. Members of Congress and state legislators who visited the site described seeing bugs on mattresses,

Detainees are said to go days without showering or getting prescription medicine, and they are only able to speak by phone to lawyers and loved ones.

Cited concerns included light pollution, saying the bright lights from the facility are diminishing the internationally recognized dark skies of Big Cypress.

President Donald Trump’s fight against America’s illegal border crossers now has serious teeth with a new migrant detention center slated for Florida’s Everglades — and state Attorney General James Uthmeier has already dubbed the facility Alligator Alcatraz.

J une 19 Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announces plans for a migrant detention center in the Everglades via X. The state has declared its official name to be Alligator Alcatraz. June 21 Protesters begin gathering near the proposed site at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport as trucks carrying supplies and fill dirt stream in.

A federal court ruled that California's ban on private prisons and detention centers like San Diego's Otay Mesa Detention Center, owned and operated by private company CoreCivic, and where migrant children were detained separately from their parents, is unconstitutional. (ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images)

Archbishop Thomas Wenski criticized the remote location of the detention site called "Alligator Alcatraz" and the rhetoric surrounding it.

Fraga's account is one of several stories from inmates and attorneys about the detention facility’s challenges during its initial opening week.

One of the largest flocks of American flamingos in the last decade was spotted in the Everglades recently, the South Florida Water Management District said in a Facebook post on Wednesday.