Florida's detention camp in the Everglades, dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz," is built on a simple premise: deterrence, with state and federal officials urging migrants to self-deport rather than end up behind its walls.

Over 250 people gathered in the beating sun July 19 to protest what could become Florida’s next immigration detention center. Protesters gathered across a nearly mile-long stretch across the road from Camp Blanding Joint Training Center in a heat index near 105 degrees.

In the rush to open a detention camp in the Florida Everglades for “some of the most vicious” migrants illegally in the country, state and federal officers detained a 15-year-old boy with no criminal record and sent him in handcuffs to Alligator Alcatraz, the Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times have learned.