In the depths of the Florida Everglades, a place teeming with mosquitoes, swamps, and predatory reptiles, the U.S. government has endorsed what many human rights activists now call the Alligator Alcatraz—a sprawling 39-square-mile detention facility for immigrants surrounded not only by steel fences, but by living, breathing barriers: alligators and pythons. Hundreds of environmentalists, Native Americans, and civil rights advocates have already taken to protesting this “facility,” denouncing it as ecologically reckless and ethically grotesque. But beneath this controversial policy lies an even more chilling historical echo—one that ties America’s original sin of slavery to today’s dehumanizing immigration practices.
To understand what Alligator Alcatraz symbolizes, we must look backward—toward one of the darkest and often buried chapters of American history: the documented position of feeding of enslaved Black infants to alligators for ‘bait’ and sport. This was recorded by Franklin Hughes, Diversity & Inclusion / Jim Crow Museum, 2013.
Yes, this happened.
The term “alligator bait” was not born from folklore or metaphor. It emerged from the mouths of 19th and 20th-century Southern hunters who sought the thick hides of alligators for shoes, belts, and other commodities. According to multiple reports, including archived Scopes and the New York Times coverage from June 3, 1908, and research compiled by authors like Dr. Patricia Turner (Ceramic Uncles & Celluloid Mammies), it was common practice for enslaved babies—or children born to Black men and white women in the Deep South—to be left at the edge of swamps as live bait. The practice was so widespread that it even inspired postcards and memorabilia, depicting caricatured Black infants and the phrase “alligator bait” without shame. The Reptilian Legacy of Racial Terror in America is real, yet the Trump administration, full steam ahead!
In parts of south Louisiana, Creole and multiracial communities once flourished— societies rooted in cultural mixture, linguistic diversity, and economic cooperation.
That is, until the hard-line white supremacist ideology of the post-Reconstruction South arrived and shattered these ecosystems of racial fluidity. Suddenly, Creole children, especially those born of white mothers and Black fathers, were no longer seen as members of an emerging multicultural world. They were “othered,” hunted, and used. They became trophies for a rising racial caste system that rejected nuance in favor of brutal clarity.
Colonizers used alligators, much like they used bloodhounds—trained not only to subdue, but to terrorize, maul, and kill Black men accused (often falsely) of infractions. The swamp became a graveyard, a lawless zone where “accidents” were common and justice was optional. Black Americans were also the original ‘swamp people’ during this time, as the path to freedom often entered waterways in southern states.
Now, in 2025, it seems history is repeating—not just as farce, but as active policy. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, backed by federal support and DHS funding (to the tune of $450 million annually via FEMA), has championed the construction of this Everglades-based immigrant detention center under the pretense of national security and cost efficiency. Photos published by DHS have sparked outrage, showing alligators near detention perimeters with politically charged, racially insensitive symbolism.
Chairman Talbert Cypress of the Miccosukee Tribe said it best: “The Everglades is the lifeline of Florida. Any impact there will be felt everywhere.” Yet the impact goes beyond ecology.
This is not just an environmental assault; it’s a racial insult—an attack on human dignity wrapped in bureaucratic language. Consider the demographic breakdown: predominantly nonviolent Black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean, and Brown immigrants from Latin America, have been targeted for detainment in this swamp-bound purgatory. Young, employed, and often legally processing their paperwork, these individuals are being treated as subhuman in the ways slaves were treated generations ago. Not a single arrest has been reported involving undocumented white immigrants from cities like Boston, Chicago, or Philadelphia. The pattern is unmistakable, too many American lawmakers on all sides have been too quiet as the browning of immigration has been successful.
“Alligator Alcatraz” is not simply a detention center. It is a living metaphor, an eerie throwback to a time when Black & Brown life was disposable and government-endorsed brutality was as natural as the surrounding wetlands.
In the 1983 film Scarface, the Cuban refugee Tony Montana faced hostility and criminalization—but not even he, or his fellow Marielitos, were condemned to mosquito- infested pits surrounded by alligators and pythons. Even in the worst of American xenophobia, there was the pretense of due process. Today, that pretense is dying, along with the humanity of those this nation is supposed to shelter.
And it wasn’t ripe either, baby. That’s what the gator always says. Anything. Children, women, men. Fingers taken as souvenirs. Limbs turned to trophies. Cooked and eaten—cannibalized not just in flesh, but in dignity. The pain was not just physical.
It was ideological. It was American.
The Black community stands firmly with our Latino brothers and sisters in denouncing this abomination. The construction of Alligator Alcatraz is not merely an ecological miscalculation or a policy mistake. It is a spiritual violation—a desecration of everything we claim to hold dear, as America loses it humanity, it gains the most powerful president ever. It turns a land of transitioning Americans-to-be into a kingdom of terror. It replaces Lady Liberty with Lady Reptile, her torch extinguished in swamp gas and history’s rotting carcasses.
And let’s be clear: This is not about crime, or borders, or economics. This is about control, about punishing brownness, Blackness, and difference. It is about making sure Barack Obama’s presidency feels like an anomaly, and not a new direction. Trumpism, and all that it has summoned along with his U.S. Supreme Court Justices, is a backlash against Black progress, Latino resilience, and multiracial democracy. Black and Brown Americans need passports, as they don’t want to be stuck in this nation the way Jews were stuck in Germany during the late 1930s and early 1940s. Misery loves company, so add into this equation, the U.S. is deporting black and brown criminals from Vietnam, Jamaica, Laos, Cuba and Yemen to African nations (South Sudan & Eswatini) with ‘no ties’ to its best interest, while keeping its white male mass shooters (murderers) in the U.S.
America must choose. Will we continue building walls in the swamp and calling it justice? Or will we finally reckon with the monsters in our national closet, as it will be illegal to talk or teach what happened? Don’t demonize gators, pythons, or mosquitoes as they all keep the ecosystem healthy. The question is, do you see this as a healthy ecosystem? Adolph Hitler learned how to exterminate jews from what Americans did to Native Americans and Black Americans. Americans inspired Nazi Germans to be more efficient terrorists. C’mon America, we can do better than this. I am not saying you must embrace your racist histories, but we will acknowledge them to learn from the past.
Apparently we haven’t learned from the past because we try to marginalize ignore and avoid (mia) it. Not this time America, not this time.
Credible Sources:
The New York Times, June 3, 1908 – “Negro Child Used As Alligator Bait” Patricia Turner, Ceramic Uncles & Celluloid Mammies (Anchor Books) Smithsonian Magazine – “The Ugly History of Racist Imagery and the Term ‘Gator Bait’” (2020) CBS News / Washington Post / DHS reports (2025) on Florida’s migrant detention expansion Testimony from Miccosukee tribal leadership (2025) The Daily Beast and ABC News are reporting on antisemitism allegations at Harvard (cited in related policy echoes)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Edmond W. Davis is a native of Philadelphia, PA. He is award-winning college and university history professor, a #1 new release author on Amazon, international speaker, journalist, and a globally recognized Tuskegee Airmen authority. He founded America’s only National HBCU Black Wall Street Career Fest. Davis also played a law enforcement officer on the NBC TV miniseries Bluff City Law.
