‘Biden wanted me in here’: Trump tours Florida’s Alligator Alcatraz detention facility with Gov Ron DeSantis

Trump was asked whether the facility would be the model going forward, to which he replied, "It can be. You don't always have land so beautiful and so secure, and lot of bodyguards and a lot of cops in the form of alligators that you don't have to pay them so much." He added, "I wouldn’t want to run through the Everglades for long."

Trump later said, after a reporter said that there are claims illegal immigrants were being kept outside in the sun, that the facility was air conditioned: "Biden wanted me in here, okay? It didn't work out that way, but he wanted me in here."

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement ahead of the facility’s opening, "Alligator Alcatraz, and other facilities like it, will give us the capability to lock up some of the worst scumbags who entered our country under the previous administration. We will expand facilities and bed space in just days, thanks to our partnership with Florida. Make America safe again."

Noem told reporters in regards to the facility, "People don't have to come here. If they self-deport and go home, they can come back legally."

Trump noted that there has been "a lot of self-deportation," to which Noem said, "yes, But if you wait and we bring you to this facility, you don't ever get to come back to America."

Per local Spectrum News reporter Jason Delago, the facility will have a maximum capacity of 3,000 and will employ 1,000 staff members. The facility was built in eight days, and is set in a location that has 10 miles of Florida’s Everglades around it in every direction. The facility has legal and clergy services, as well as air conditioning, laundry, and a recreation yard.