The Trump administration created a mosquito-plagued gulag where prisoners’ forbearance is tested. Many things are wrong with the Florida migrant detention center officially named “Alligator Alcatraz,” but least of these are the gators and pythons that populate the environmentally sensitive Everglades, where the prison is located.

A senior White House official said Friday that President Trump’s request to reopen Alcatraz at a reported $2 billion price tag seems “excessive.” The figure “sounds excessive,

When the Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times published a list Sunday of more than 700 detainees held at the A lligator Alcatraz detention facility in South Florida, it confirmed what many have suspected all along: Despite political claims to the contrary, many of the migrants being detained have no U.S. criminal convictions or pending charges.

Jim Beever spent much of his career reviewing large developments in the Collier County area, which is where the detention center is being built.

ICE detention standards are difficult to enforce because they aren’t written into law. Rather than follow a uniform standard, detention centers operate under a patchwork of different standards.

The ACLU, ACLU of Florida and Americans for Immigrant Justice are working with detainees and other groups representing them, including Florida Keys Immigration, Sanctuary of the South, U.S. Immigration Law Counsel, Victoria Slatton of Sanabria & Associates, and the Law Offices of Catherine Perez, PLLC.

But data and news reports about the first month’s arrivals show the majority of Alligator Alcatraz’s detainees do not have U.S. criminal convictions.  President Donald Trump, federal officials and Florida Republicans touted the remote Everglades immigration detention centers — dubbed Alligator Alcatraz — as a place to detain people deemed the "worst of the worst.