By Sarah Liese, KOSU
After learning about the proposed migrant detention center, often referred to as “Alligator Alcatraz,” Jake Tiger recognized that history is repeating itself. Tiger, a cultural specialist for the Seminole Nation, noted similarities between escalating immigrant detentions and the Holocaust concentration camps, as well as the U.S. Indian Removal Act of 1830.
“All of us historians understand we’re starting to draw these parallels where they’re coming in and wanting to take brown people, and they call them ‘illegals,’” Tiger said. “You know, no one can be illegal on stolen land. And so when we see that, that’s just a clear case of colonial oppression. …And for them to take our sacred lands and just dispose of it and put these monuments of white supremacy, I do not stand for that.”
Tiger’s tribal nation, the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, is joining forces with the two federally recognized tribes in Florida in the fight against Ron DeSantis and Florida’s rapid efforts to build a migrant detention center set to house 5,000 beds. The center is currently under construction in the Big Cypress region of Florida, near the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier shared a video on X, proposing the immigration crackdown project and the attractive features of this specific location.
“This 30-square-foot mile area is completely surrounded by the Everglades. It presents an efficient, low-cost opportunity to build a temporary detention facility because you don’t need to invest that much in the perimeter,” Uthmeier said in the video. “If people get out, there’s not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons.”
The Miccosukee Tribe’s Chairman highlighted what Uthmeier’s message is missing: the lands are much more than an appealing site for an immigrant holding center; the lands hold American Indian history and are adjacent to 19 traditional Miccosukee and Seminole villages.
“Rather than Miccosukee homelands being an uninhabited wasteland for alligators and pythons, as some have suggested, the Big Cypress is the Tribe’s traditional homelands,” Miccosukee Tribal Chairman Talbert Cypress said in a statement. “The landscape has protected the Miccosukee and Seminole people for generations.”
Tiger said the Seminole people come from various groups— the Miccosukee, Muskogean and Hitchiti, among others— and had traditional homelands in Alabama, Georgia and Florida. He explained that his ancestors knew no borders, migrating between the different areas due to weather conditions, such as hurricanes and frigid winters.
Yet, because of the U.S. government’s removal policies toward American Indians, many Seminoles living in the southeast were violently forced to relocate to Oklahoma. Now, they make up the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma. Those who were able to resist the forced removal by living in Florida’s swamps still live in Florida and are known today as the Seminole Tribe of Florida.
“There were a lot of Seminole people who utilized the Florida Everglades as a home ground, to take shelter and evade removal and war because it was hard for a lot of the Army, Marines and Navy to traverse through the Florida Everglades,” Tiger said. “But we already knew how to get in around there.”
Seminole Nation of Oklahoma Chief Lewis Johnson also emphasized the importance of the area for its historical significance, symbolism and the ecosystems dependent on the health of the land.
“These lands are not empty stretches of wilderness, nor are they merely backdrops to policy decisions—they are living, breathing homelands, deeply tied to the cultural, spiritual and historical identity of Miccosukee and Florida and Seminole people,” Johnson said in a statement.
In 2022, Tiger visited Florida for the first time and struggled to describe his experience of seeing the Everglades, largely due to the landscape’s breathtaking beauty. He could tell that the wildlife was being cared for, but he worried about its future.
“We’re seeing this massive push of the total lack of respect for these lands that have always been here,” Tiger said. “We call ourselves the free world. To us, that’s just a clear case of colonialism that’s still being oppressed upon the first American people here in North America. …What I’m trying to explain to people is when the whole forest has been cut down and our waters have been polluted, we will then understand you cannot eat a dollar or drink oil.”
This article was originally published by KOSU.
