🌊 A Tale of Two Borders

The US has Alligator Alcatraz. Will the UK soon, too?

July 10, 2025

US-Mexico Border

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By Max Frost

Last week, President Trump provided some advice to ICE detainees: “Don't run in a straight line, run like this.” He gestured in a zigzag motion. “We're going to teach them how to run away from an alligator.” 

Trump was speaking at the opening of “Alligator Alcatraz,” the federal government’s new alligator-encircled detention center, situated around an airstrip in the swamps of the Everglades. 

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis explained how the facility will work: "You'll be able to bring people in, they'll get processed, they have an order of removal, then they can be queued and the federal government can fly – right on the runway, right there, you literally drive them 2,000 feet, put them on a plane and then they're gone."

Most people will be housed in tents, unable to escape because the facility is surrounded by gators. Although Trump added that if escapees run in a zigzag, “Your chances go up about one percent."

While Alligator Alcatraz dominated headlines last week, the most impactful immigration story was undeniably Trump’s signing of the Big Beautiful Bill (BBB).

With one stroke of the pen, $178B was allocated to enforce American immigration laws. $46.5B of that will go to border wall expenses and related technology; $45B will pay for detention facilities, potentially nearly doubling the existing 56,000 detention beds; and $29.9B will fund ICE staffing and equipment. 

The funding has predictably been lauded by Republicans and condemned by liberals, among them the Financial Times’ Edward Luce. In a piece titled “Trump’s ominous ICE security state,” he wrote:

The nation of immigrants’ shift to mass deportation is among the most shocking turns in US history…Trump is ushering in America’s ICE age. He has catapulted ICE into America’s best-funded law enforcement agency – and increasingly beyond accountability. The agency’s in-house watchdog was scrapped earlier this year. For the time being, the lower courts can do little to rein it in. The Supreme Court last year gave Trump sweeping immunity from “official” acts he takes as president. That makes ICE Trump’s de facto private army – his security state within the state.

Yet while Luce and other prominent commentators express shock at the record funding of America’s “immigration industrial complex,” new headlines suggest that the root causes of it remain unchanged. 

As the US national editor and columnist at the Financial Times – arguably Britain’s and Europe’s most prominent business paper – Luce is among the world’s most influential political writers. Like many other professional commentators, he’s a fierce critic of Trump and his immigration policies. Yet while he criticizes the US’ policies, anger about immigration is driving support to the populist right in his own country, the UK. 

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Editor’s Note

A lot of readers wrote to us asking for a full analysis of the risks of excessive government debt. We’re working on that and we’ll run it this weekend. In the meantime, please share your thoughts with us: Do you support the record border funding, or are you worried by it? What should countries do about mass immigration? Let us know by writing in here. 

Also, if you missed our three-part Big Beautiful Bill deep-dive, find it below. It was the most popular series we’ve ever published.

Thanks and see you tomorrow.

—Max and Max