Alligator Alcatraz or Alligator Auschwitz?
America is officially in the concentration camp business.
There’s a new detention center in the Everglades.
It’s isolated. Barbed-wired. Patrolled.
And it’s being called Alligator Auschwitz.
Is that an overreach?
Or is it a warning we’d be fools to ignore?
Let’s break it down.
What Is It?
This facility—nicknamed Alligator Alcatraz by officials, and Alligator Auschwitz by its critics—is designed to detain large numbers of immigrants, indefinitely and out of sight. It’s built in a swamp, surrounded by wildlife, wire, and watchtowers. There’s no public access. No cameras. No press.
It’s not a prison. It’s not a jail.
There are no trials. No timelines.
Just cages. Just containment.
What is a Concentration Camp?
Historically, a concentration camp is not the same as a death camp—though the two often overlap.
A concentration camp is:
A site for the mass detention of civilians—usually from marginalized, racial, ethnic, religious, or political groups—without trial or due process.
Isolated and intentionally dehumanizing.
Used to strip detainees of their rights, their identity, and often their safety.
This definition predates the Nazis. The British used concentration camps in the Boer War. And during WWII, the U.S. also, and shamefully, used them for Japanese-Americans. The purpose is always the same: isolate and control a population deemed “undesirable.”
So, yes—Alligator Alcatraz meets the basic definition of a concentration camp.
But What About Auschwitz?
Here’s the part too many forget:
Auschwitz didn’t start as a death camp.
It began in 1940 as a detention site for political prisoners.
It became a death factory only later—step by step, gate by gate.
So no, Florida’s swamp camp isn’t Auschwitz in scale or in horror.
But Auschwitz wasn’t Auschwitz at the beginning either.
And that’s the point.
The bar for outrage shouldn’t be mass extermination.
It should be the building of the system that makes mass cruelty possible.
Why the Name Sticks
It’s not just the alliteration—though Alligator Auschwitz hits hard.
It’s the echo. Because we’ve seen this movie before.
Strip people of citizenship.
Deny them lawyers.
Warehouse them in remote camps.
Justify it as “security” or “sovereignty.”
Let cruelty do the dirty work.
It’s not exactly the same. But it’s also not different enough. And that should bother everyone.
So What Do We Call It?
Call it what you want:
A human rights violation
A test balloon for authoritarian rule
A moral failure wrapped in razor wire
But don’t call it normal.
And don’t call it necessary.
The name Alligator Auschwitz isn’t meant to trivialize history.
It’s meant to prevent repeating it.
Because if we wait until the gas chambers to object, we’ve already waited too long.
And if you’re okay with this, if you support this detention facility in concept and in operation, ask yourself: What wouldn’t you be okay with? Because if alligator-guarded cages in the swamp aren’t your line, you may not have one.
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Jon, you are sadly right :(
I wish more Americans knew History as well as you.
Being myself fond of History, I may suggest this: First historical use of concentration camp were indeed during the Boer war, but the second one might have been in 1904-1908 in neighbouring Namibia.
The imperial German colonizers used them during the Herrero genocide. Actually it quickly became kind of death camps.
Technically the key point was that barbed wires had been invented at the end of XIXth century. It made these atrocities possible, although, of course, it does not alter the moral culpability of the authorities.
Tom
This is so sad that we have become so incredibly cruel to our fellow man. The simile is apt. The crimes are ours if we don't do anything about it.