On July 16, days after the first media investigations about sparse criminal backgrounds among the population were published, Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., characterized the migrants at Alligator Alcatraz as "military-age males, and a lot of them have criminal records."

An Italian passport holder was already preparing to leave the U.S. All three ended up at Alligator Alcatraz, a vast compound of tents and trailers built to hold up to 3,000 migrants deep in the Florida Everglades.

"If somebody were to get out, there's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide — only the alligators and pythons are waiting," Uthmeier told "Fox Business."

"In most respects, ICE facilities operate with less consistent oversight and legal accountability than state or federal prisons or local jails," Brinkley-Rubinstein said. "ICE detention facilities and people that run them tend to be much less transparent about their operations."

The state of Florida has opened a migrant detention center in the Everglades. Its official name is Alligator Alcatraz, a reference to the former maximum security federal penitentiary in San Francisco Bay.

The "Alligator Alcatraz" detention center is expected to cost $450 million a year, a U.S. official told The Associated Press. Snopes archives' contributed to this report. Sources

Alligator Alcatraz is located in a remote region in South Florida, which includes the Florida Everglades and Big Cypress Wildlife Management Area. There are few roads and even fewer towns.

President Donald Trump visits "Alligator Alcatraz," a new detention facility in the Florida Everglades surrounded by alligators and pythons, set to house up to 5,000 migrants.

Key to the marketing ploy underpinning Florida's detention camp in the Everglades is the alligator, portrayed by Republican leaders as a blood-thirsty prison guard ready to attack anyone who escapes.Why it matters: Nothing about the portrayal is accurate,