Defenders of the Everglades

In the final episode, Your Florida tells the story of the rise and fall of the immigration detention center nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz.” From people who’ve fought to stop operations at the facility, to those who fought against plans to build the world’s largest jetport at the same site more than 50 years ago – it all comes together here.  

Your Florida spent nearly a year reporting on the detention center dubbed Alligator Alcatraz, and the history beneath it. WUSF’s host of Florida Matters Live & Local, Matthew Peddie, talks to the team, Meghan Bowman and Amy Tardif, about how they put it all together. 

Elam Stoltzfus is a documentarian. Years ago, he interviewed Nathaniel Reed, Joe Browder, and Clyde Butcher for a film about the Big Cypress National Preserve. Stoltzfuz shared some of those with Your Florida to help tell the story of the Everglades Jetport. Now, Stoltzfus shares how he thinks Reed and Browder would feel about a detention center on the same land they worked so hard to protect.

Nathaniel Reed was recently awarded a posthumous Medal of Freedom from Gov. Ron DeSantis. He’s one of four people recognized for their work in protecting and preserving the Everglades. In 1967, Reed became the first environmental advisor to a Florida governor. In his first year on the job, he successfully fought against the Everglades jetport, the same place where the immigration detention center Alligator Alcatraz is now.

The late Joe Browder may have been the most important influence in stopping the Everglades Jetport. He moved to Miami in the 1960s and went from being a reporter to working in the heart of Florida’s environmental movement – he even got Marjory Stoneman Douglas involved. The interview was conducted by filmmaker Elam Stoltzfus in 2008. 

Captain Franklin Adams has been a charter boat captain, eco-tour operator, and Florida Master Naturalist. He was a surveyor with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers working in Everglades National Park and a warden with the National Audubon Society. He also had the honor of being mentored by Marjorie Stoneman Douglas. Now in his upper 80s, Adams recounts his time fighting the jetport. 

Larry Teply was a law student at the University of Florida in 1971 when he and his late roommate wrote a law review article about the then-current controversy over the Jetport. It was published in the University of Miami Law Review and serves as one of the best historical documents of that time on the subject. 

 In the 1960s, plans to build the world’s largest jetport were underway. Environmentalists like Marjory Stoneman Douglas pushed back. She founded the organization Friends of the Everglades with the sole purpose of stopping construction. Her group and others put so much pressure on local, state, and federal governments that construction was stopped, and the jetport plans were scrapped. Now, on the same runway, there are rows of tents and temporary structures. It’s an immigration detention center the state dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.”Environmental groups, including the one Douglas started to close the jetport are suing to shut it down. Lawyers are citing the same laws put in place after the jetport. We look back 60 years ago and talk to those who thought this battle was fought and won.