As the saying goes, you can’t fix stupid. And trying to fix some colossally stupid blunders can be painfully expensive. Like, $450 million expensive.

That’s what the U.S. government and the State of Florida stand to lose on that monument to man’s inhumanity to man in the Florida Everglades know as Donald Trump’s “Alligator Alcatraz.”

Not that it was ever meant to resemble Trump’s palatial Mar-a-Lago; it was, after all, just temporary housing for those so-called lowlife immigrants being deported en masse, without due process, to third-world nations that Trump himself has called “shithole countries.” But it was the most ill-conceived, hastily-developed, inhumane, downright evil piece of work devised since the Nazis built Auschwitz. The only things lacking were the gas chamber and crematorium.

And it was stuck, intentionally, in the middle of an alligator-infested swamp, to make it impossible for any inmate to escape alive and with all of his limbs intact.

All of the voiced opposition, the evidence of uninhabitable conditions, and the public outrage at the inhumane treatment of the detainees failed to bring about any improvements . . . until last week, when U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams ordered the facility to wind down its operations. What finally did the trick was a movement by local environmental groups fighting for the protected wetlands, and the pleas of the indigenous Miccosukee Tribe to refrain from desecrating their sacred lands.

And here is a huge shout-out to those good Americans!

Judge Williams disagreed with the protestations of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), who complained that her order would disrupt their immigration process. She said that the government’s “immigration enforcement goals will not be thwarted by a pause in operations,” and that the number of detainees had been dwindling in any event. [Mike Schneider and Kate Payne, A.P. News, August 28, 2025.]

DHS finally acknowledged that they are “complying with this order and moving detainees to other facilities.” [Id.]

So, at last we have a bit of good news to celebrate.

All we have to do is not dwell on thoughts of how much good could have been done with all of that wasted money, or what new hell awaits the people who were imprisoned there.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
9/2/25