Alligator Alcatraz, Florida\u2019s hastily built, $225 million-and-counting<\/a> immigrant detention facility in the Everglades, is both a de facto concentration camp and a right-wing meme. President Donald Trump\u2019s most ardent supporters are willing to excuse \u2014 or are in some cases reveling in \u2014 allegations of inhumane treatment at the facility<\/a>: worms in food, floors flooded with fecal water, fluorescent lights left on for 24 hours a day, and no air conditioning at night despite South Florida\u2019s relentless humidity.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n To them, the whole thing is a big joke, fodder for memes that activate the base even as they turn the majority of Americans off from Trump\u2019s draconian immigration enforcement.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n One Republican member of Congress is also selling Alligator Alcatraz merch<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Laura Loomer, a close confidante of Trump\u2019s, was giddy at the prospect<\/a> of potential escapees dying in the act. \u201cThe good news is, alligators are guaranteed at least 65 million meals if we start now,\u201d she posted on X. (The figure refers not to the estimated number of undocumented immigrants in the country but to the United States\u2019 entire Latino population<\/a>.) Conservative commentator Benny Johnson compared the facility\u2019s entrance to Jurassic Park<\/em> and bragged about<\/a> getting official Alligator Alcatraz merch during his visit. (Before his rightward turn, and before he was fired from BuzzFeed for plagiarism, Johnson also compared the Arab Spring to Jurassic Park<\/em>. It\u2019s unclear if he\u2019s seen any other movies.) One Republican member of Congress is also selling Alligator Alcatraz merch<\/a> to fund her reelection campaign. There\u2019s more merch on Etsy. Obviously, there\u2019s also a shitcoin<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The memes and merch are more than a get-rich-quick scheme for enterprising nativists, though grift is obviously always part of the MAGA equation. In his second term, Trump has turned immigration enforcement into a spectator sport. Far-right influencers like Chaya Raichik, better known as Libs of TikTok, have been invited to ride-alongs<\/a> with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has turned her position into a sort of cowboy cop cosplay, often appearing in public in a bulletproof vest or a ten-gallon hat (or sometimes both). The official White House X account is posting \u201cdeportation ASMR\u201d<\/a> and Studio Ghibli-fied images<\/a> of crying migrants in handcuffs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n There\u2019s a real glee to it. To borrow from Adam Serwer, the cruelty is the point, but there\u2019s more to it than that. At this year\u2019s Conservative Political Action Conference, Vice President JD Vance said that voters had given Trump a mandate on immigration enforcement; Trump won the popular vote in part because the public was clamoring for mass deportations. It\u2019s true that before the 2024 election, most voters expressed disapproval with President Joe Biden\u2019s border policy and seemed open to a more hardline approach to immigration<\/a>. But Trump \u2014 and the zoomers presumably running the White House\u2019s social media \u2014 either haven\u2019t realized that public opinion is no longer on his side with regard to immigration, or they simply don\u2019t care.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Trump seems even less beholden to public opinion in his second term than he was in his first. Since January, he has pursued deeply unpopular policies, from tariffs to completely gutting the federal government, so relentlessly that he has even lost support from his own base. Half a year into Trump\u2019s second term, it\u2019s clear that voters agreed with some of his proposals in abstract terms \u2014 they elected him because he promised to \u201cdo something about immigration\u201d and \u201crun the government like a business\u201d \u2014 but don\u2019t like how these policies have played out in practice.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n A chunk of Republican voters have turned against tariffs<\/a> and Elon Musk\u2019s Department of Government Efficiency<\/a>. Still other Trump supporters have seen their friends<\/a>, relatives, and spouses targeted by ICE since the president\u2019s return to office. One naturalized citizen who voted for Trump was even stopped by ICE agents<\/a> while driving to work; he now believes that ICE is racially profiling Latinos. He told a local news station that he voted for Trump because he would be targeting \u201ccriminals, not every Hispanic, Spanish-look-alike.\u201d Trump\u2019s approval rating on immigration<\/a> is now down to 41 percent, the lowest since his second term began. Voters may have trusted Trump to get \u201ccriminals\u201d out of the country, but they weren\u2019t necessarily expecting his administration to indiscriminately target noncitizens (and some citizens as well), deploy the National Guard to arrest immigrants and crack down on protesters in Los Angeles, or disappear hundreds of people to a Salvadoran megaprison.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In a post<\/a> on X, White House adviser Stephen Miller justified the decision to sic the National Guard on protesters by saying that \u201cAmerica voted for mass deportations.\u201d Recent polling suggests that Americans are no longer on board with Trump\u2019s immigration agenda. Rather than responding to this shift in voters\u2019 sentiment, the administration appears to be doubling down on its all-or-nothing approach to immigration enforcement and to its gleeful depictions of these draconian policies online. The memes create a sort of alternate reality, a virtual universe in which everyone is still on the Trump Train and all Americans are thrilled at the prospect of feeding immigrants to alligators. This echo chamber benefits from \u2014 and is amplified by \u2014 algorithmic silos. Your average voter may read about Alligator Alcatraz in the news, but they aren\u2019t necessarily seeing Benny Johnson\u2019s concentration camp selfies. The memes are in-group signaling; they engender a sense of belonging for Trump\u2019s most ardent supporters while inuring them to the cruelty of this new era. The memes are politics disjointed from polls and demagoguery free of democracy, a sign that the White House \u2014 either out of recklessness or something much worse \u2014 does not care about elections.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n