ISTANBUL

The head of the US Homeland Security Department on Monday expressed hope to replicate the controversial “Alligator Alcatraz” migrant detention center at new facilities near airports and jails across the country.

Florida’s immigration detention center will serve as a model for state-run migrant detention centers, with potential facilities “right by airport runways that will help give us an efficiency that we've never had before,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem Noem told CBS.

She said she had directly appealed to governors and state leaders nationwide, and “most of them are interested,” Noem stated, adding that in states backing President Donald Trump’s border security mission, “many of them have facilities that may be empty or underutilized.”

The administration has targeted facilities in Arizona, Nebraska, and Louisiana, where the only Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center located on an airport tarmac currently operates, according to CBS.

Noem said that the Alligator Alcatraz model is “much better” than ICE’s current contracts with local jails and for-profit prisons, which run most of the country’s detention centers.

She said the new facilities, all located near airports or runways, will help ICE reduce costs by "facilitating quick turnarounds," but did not address the question of due process for those slated for deportation.

In recent months, immigrants said to have the right to be in the US have often been swiftly deported, leaving them no legal recourse to challenge their removal, or taken to facilities far from their homes, with no access to legal counsel.

The Trump administration’s tent facility in a Florida swamp, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” has faced criticism over detainees' health conditions.

According to a recent Human Rights Watch report, immigrants held in three federal detention centers in Florida endure inhumane conditions such as abuse, medical neglect, severe overcrowding, freezing cells without bedding, and insufficient hygiene supplies.

Since President Donald Trump took office, his administration has intensified immigration crackdowns, increasing detention and deportations as part of its enforcement agenda.

He has drawn criticism for rounding up law-abiding migrants, some of them US residents for decades, many with families, instead of the accused criminals, drug dealers, and terrorists he had promised to target.

Legal residents who criticized Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza or US support for Israel have also been targeted for deportation.