Miami Beach condemns ‘dehumanizing rhetoric’ surrounding Alligator Alcatraz

City commissioners in Miami Beach are condemning the recent barrage of “rhetoric that dehumanizes immigrants and promotes violence, cruelty and wrongful detention,” particularly surrounding the controversial Everglades detention site known as Alligator Alcatraz.

An official statement unanimously approved by the commission on Wednesday said the city’s elected leaders on the nonpartisan board felt compelled “to speak out clearly and unequivocally against the growing use of violent and dehumanizing rhetoric directed at immigrants — rhetoric that threatens the safety, dignity and well-being of thousands of families who call Miami Beach home.”

It also rejected “statements by national leaders” and the promotion of “hunting down, caging, wrongful detention, or celebrating harm against immigrants, including the use of deadly wildlife such as alligators in the Everglades.”

The statement makes Miami Beach one of the first Florida cities to formally oppose Alligator Alcatraz and the national political discourse supporting the detention center.

But it comes amid a loudening chorus of criticism from individual political and religious leaders in South Florida. Miami-Dade’s top Catholic official, Archbishop Thomas Wenski, earlier this month condemned the rhetoric surrounding Alligator Alcatraz as “intentionally provocative” and “corrosive of the common good.” Wenski recently visited the detention facility to pray for detainees held there and has said that “unbecoming” comments from public officials portraying migrants as prey or criminals are “making America mean.” Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava has also expressed concerns about the facility.

While the Miami Beach City Commission unanimously passed the statement of condemnation, what’s officially called a “resolution,” commissioners did not actually discuss the matter or comment further during the meeting. Sponsored by Commissioners Alex Fernandez and Tanya K. Bhatt, the resolution was endorsed by the city’s Hispanic Affairs Committee and immigrant rights groups.

Fernandez, the son of an immigrant family, told the Miami Herald on Thursday that the opening of Alligator Alcatraz earlier this month spurred him to draft the resolution.

“The rhetoric has escalated beyond a debate on border policy. There’s a conscious effort to dehumanize immigrants. This resolution draws a moral line,” Fernandez said. “We won’t be silent in the face of cruelty. This is a normalization of hate and violent rhetoric.”

The Herald has previously reported on the “gator bait” trope in Florida’s history, a Jim Crow-era joke that dehumanized Black people, depicting them as bait to lure and kill alligators. “Basically, the same kind of anger, the same kind of resentment is now being transferred to immigrants,” historian Marvin Dunn told the Herald.

The resolution details comments President Donald Trump made around Alligator Alcatraz as “echoing historically dangerous language used to justify exclusion and violence” and notes “the real-life consequences” for local residents. Specifically mentioned was the case of Josué Aguilar Valle, a Honduran immigrant and 2018 Miami Beach High School graduate with no criminal record who was arrested by authorities after an appointment at a Kendall immigration office and deported.

Fernandez said it was the first time in recent memory his colleagues on the commission had stood together behind a social issue with “no questions asked.”

“For months, I’ve carried the frustration of wanting to do more for those in our community who are afraid to call 911, go to the hospital or use basic city services,” Fernandez said. “That has been one of the hardest parts of serving as a Hispanic elected official — knowing the limits of what I can legally do, even when in my heart I want to do more.”

The Miami Beach resolution carries no legal power, but city officials said it affirmed Miami Beach’s values, upholding the dignity of immigrants amid the current climate of fear. “It opens up the conversation,” said Bhatt, the resolution’s co-sponsor, who refuses to use the name Alligator Alcatraz.

“It’s offensive to give it a catchy name. Call it what it is — an internment center. It’s exactly what we saw in World War II, with the internment of Japanese citizens,” she told the Herald. “We can’t effect change at that facility, but we can exert pressure by empowering people to speak up about what they know is correct.”