I’ve written quite a bit recently about the the mounting economic and humanitarian red flags surrounding Florida’s so-called “Alligator Alcatraz.”
Not surprisingly, these columns have generated a lot of angry emails, both from those who agree with me and those who argue mass deportations are more important than focusing on financial improprieties, humanitarian concerns and due process violations.
But there has also been one more group of angry emailers that caught me off guard — those angry that I haven’t compared what’s happening to immigrants in Florida to what happened to Jews in Nazi Germany.
“Call it what it is,” several have demanded: “Alligator Auschwitz.” Some other media outlets have already taken to parroting the Auschwitz nickname.
Let me be clear: I will not call it that.
Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “Alcatraz” moniker may be gaslighting political schtick, but Auschwitz is a place where more than 1 million people were systemically murdered. And before anyone casually tosses around a term like that, they might consider listening to the people who know the history of Auschwitz — those at the Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center of Florida.
The center minced no words in saying that comparing a detention center in Florida to the site of a global genocide “trivializes the horrors of Auschwitz.”
“Auschwitz is not a rhetorical device,” the center said in a statement. “It is not a catch-all term for injustice or cruelty.”
Holocaust comparisons aren’t just inaccurate, they often get in the way of meaningful discussion and debate, said Stephen Poynor, the center’s director of education and community engagement.
“It can evoke outrage and not critical thought,” he said. It’s an attempt to compare injustices and seek simple answers to complex questions. “We don’t need to compare anyone’s pain to know it’s horrific.”
Just as importantly, in my world, comparing South Florida’s detention center to a death camp simply isn’t accurate.
We can have fair debate over whether Florida’s tent-and-cages facility meets the definition of a concentration camp. The author of a book on the “Global History of Concentration Camps” argued this month on MSNBC.com that it does — “mass civilian detention without real trials targeting vulnerable groups for political gain based on ethnicity, race, religion or political affiliation rather than for crimes committed.”
And Poynor agrees the facility meets many of the technical definitions, noting that Nazis invented neither the concept nor the term. But he also observes that most people think of the Holocaust when they hear the term. That is, in fact, precisely why many people use it.
Yet detention center critics who jump straight to Holocaust comparisons play right into the hands of politicians who are eager to deflect from legitimate concerns about the center. They can sidestep valid concerns about due process and no-bid deals by saying, hey, crackpots, no one’s being systematically murdered here.
And that allows them to skirt the real problems. The Miami Herald, Orlando Sentinel and others have reported on people being imprisoned without charges, teens as young as 15 being improperly held, detainees whose attorneys and families say they’re in this country legally and attorneys saying they’ve been unable to even speak with their clients.
If you don’t care about any of that, don’t you dare call yourself a supporter of the U.S. Constitution. Due process is one of the principles that is supposed to separate the United States from lands of tyranny.
Then there are the financial red flags that have accompanied virtually all of DeSantis’ “emergency” spending on immigration — costly no-bid contracts awarded to political donors that have been hidden from the public and haven’t been audited the way Florida law demands.
This is all deadly serious stuff, which is why politicians who know they can’t defend it try to distract.
If you don’t care about the missing audits on these no-bid deals, spare the rest of us any claim that you believe in fiscal responsibility — or the rule of law.
So yeah, get informed about the human and economic irregularities going on with your money under your nose. And get mad and demand better if you care about transparency, accountability, human rights, due process and fair justice.
But don’t go straight to Nazi genocide comparisons from a century ago. Because there’s plenty disturbing about what’s happening right here and right now in Florida in 2025.
Scott Maxwell is an Orlando Sentinel columnist. Contact him at smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com.
