Scott and Conny Randolph live on a wild piece of land they call paradise. They’re comforted by the hoots of owls and snorts of pig frogs. They look up at night to a sky full of glittering stars. And when they get up in the morning, they look out the window to greet their neighbor, a six-foot-long alligator named Big Momma.

Anyone who listens to the Randolphs, who live on the property of the Clyde Butcher Big Cypress Gallery, will get an earful on how beautiful, magical and serene the Big Cypress National Preserve is.

But those who listen to Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, who proposed building Alligator Alcatraz, a migrant detention center smack dab in the middle of sprawling Everglades marsh, may get a different picture. “You don’t need to invest that much in the perimeter. If people get out, there’s not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons. No where to go, no where to hide,” he said in a video posted on X.

This otherwise quiet section of the Everglades has drawn national attention and controversy to the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, a landing strip north of Tamiami Trail where Uthmeier and Gov. Ron DeSantis have fast-tracked the construction of what they have dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.” For days, trucks have hauled in supplies and tools for the site to be operational, officials say, by July.

Folks who live and work in Big Cypress, a federally protected section of the vast Florida Everglades, are pushing back on outsiders’ misconceptions of their beloved swamp. It is not totally inhospitable to human life — just ask the Seminoles and Miccosukees. The invasive Burmese pythons, though numerous, are actually kind of hard to find, they say. The folks out here find alligators to be pretty chill — so long as you don’t get too close to Big Momma’s nest.

“In 14 years, I’ve never come across a Burmese python on these 13 acres. But I’ll tell you what I have come across: bears, bobcats, alligators, wood storks,” Scott Randolph said as he pointed out his nature photography at the gallery. “It’s this beautiful system that, seriously, is such a rarity.”

And while Big Cypress is definitely backwoods compared to densely populated downtown Miami, hundreds of people live off this stretch of Tamiami Trail, depending on the time of year. Campers hang out on Loop Road. Staff live on site at Everglades photographer Clyde Butcher’s gallery. Airboat tour attractions and gift shops dot the highway. Notably, there are also about 20 Miccosukee villages along the Trail.

“To hear how it’s described by people who never grew up here, who who aren’t from here, as a wasteland. This abandoned, barren land. ‘Nobody is out here,’” said Betty Osceola, a Miccosukee tribal member and activist. “I’m like, ‘What about me?’ I’m somebody.”

The proposal and quick turn around has outraged residents on several fronts, including immigration, environmental protections and Indigenous rights. Those against the facility, who plan on demonstrating on Saturday, argue the $450 million facility undermines the billions of dollars spent on restoring the Everglades and jeopardizes a fragile ecosystem. DeSantis, eager to support President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts, says the facility is necessary and environmentally benign.

“It’ll have zero impact on the Everglades,” he said on Fox News.

Live, laugh, love mosquitoes

Still dressed in his mosquito net jacket, John Kalafarski unfurled laminated maps of the Everglades in the parking lot outside acclaimed nature photographer Clyde Butcher’s gallery. He likes to show people how vast the swamp was before development.

True nature lovers like Kalafarski thrive in the Everglades. He lived on Loop Road in the preserve for 10 years in the ‘90s. Now, the Naples resident guides tourists on swamp walks and pulls out snail shells from his backpack to show kids. Many years ago, he said, a couple of journalists came by working on a story about why people live out here. “You won’t understand until I take you on a swamp walk,” he told them.

When asked about Alligator Alcatraz, he shook his head solemnly.

The gallery , which displays and sells 82-year-old Butcher’s black-and-white images and offers guided swamp walks, is less than 10 miles away from the soon-to-be detention site.

The Randolphs, who’ve been married for 37 years, have lived in the cottage behind the gallery for the last 14 years. Scott Randolph, a resident artist at the gallery, takes striking color images of his surroundings. Big Momma the alligator is one of his muses, as are curious bobcats and the serene landscape. He pointed to one image he took of the night sky. The Milky Way was clear as day. When he took the photo, all he could hear was the sound of insects.

In fact, the Randolphs love the nature so much, they share one hot take few South Floridians can relate to — they don’t mind the mosquitoes.

“I’m happy to see mosquitoes! They’re healthy mosquitoes, and they benefit so much to nature. It’s a small price to pay to live out here,” Scott Randolph said. “[Mosquitoes] let me know the environment is trying to work. If you have little stuff, you’re gonna have big stuff.”

They learn to cope with the extreme heat as well. In the winter, Conny Randolph said, she doesn’t sweat. But in the summer, she needs to change her clothes several times a day. “It’s harsh, but it’s totally, utterly, completely worth it,” she said.

By working at the gallery and providing swamp tours, staff member Trish Elser said she wants to spread awareness of the Everglades’ beauty and why it needs to be protected. She hoped one particular visitor got that message. A contractor for Alligator Alcatraz stopped by the gallery this week, she said. He was struck by the beauty, she said.

“I’m glad we were able to show him love and what we love about the Everglades,” Elser said.

Growing up on Miccosukee land

Betty Osceola was among the last generation of Miccosukee to live entirely off the land. Growing up in Big Cypress, nearly all the food her family ate came from their environment, she said.

As a girl, Osceola and her siblings ran outside into the swamp barefoot. She has fond memories swimming in rivers while one kid kept an eye out for alligators passing by. As the seasons changed, her mother would remind her when panthers and bears were roaming around. The tribal kids were free to play outside all day, she said, so long as they were back home before sundown.

“We were barefoot going out into the swamps that everybody is so afraid of,” Osceola said. “That was our playground.”

Life out there is tranquil, she said, or at least it was before the cacophony of trucks bringing in supplies for the detention site. The sudden influx of people raises safety concerns, Osceola said. But her primary concern is for nature. How are the trees? The ibis? The endangered panthers that live nearby?

While state officials portray alligators as built-in security guards, Osceola said her favorite animal is nothing of the sort.

“I was kind of offended on the alligator’s behalf with the way they talk about them,” she said. “I don’t think the alligator wants its name attached to the word Alcatraz.”

The Miccosukee have always been in the Everglades and found refuge there during the Seminole Wars, said Chairman Talbert Cypress. Tribal ceremonial grounds and villages are “very close” to the proposed facility, he said. (Osceola told the Herald she knows a family who’s home is less than half a mile away.)

“We have a very close knit community. Everybody knows each other,” Cypress said. “Even the Gladesmen that live out there, they have family history out there and we have family history with them. We’ve stuck together through many challenges over the hundreds of thousands of years that we’ve been there.” Gladesmen is a term for non-natives who have lived, hunted and fished in the Glades for decades.

Cypress said the Miccosukee Business Council’s priority is to protect the Everglades and advocate for the Miccosukee and Seminole community. As buses bring in and out people, supplies and waste to the facility, Cypress said increased traffic on the two-lane Tamiami Trail will be a major issue.

“It’s just a huge burden for the state to take on, and the federal government as well. I don’t quite think they understand the scope of how much it’s going to cost,” Cypress said. “God forbid anything emergency-wise happens.”

Locals have been keeping a close eye on the construction progress, making their presence known as they watch trucks pull in and out. Garrett Stuart, 41, an environmental scientist of Lakota descent, stood outside the facility just three miles away from where he lives with the Miccosukee. He formed a close bond with Osceola, who adopted him as a nephew.

Stuart criticized DeSantis for, as he put it, flip-flopping on his stance of protecting the Everglades when he first ran for governor. And he scoffed at the idea that there’s nowhere for detainees to go if they escape. They’d be more likely to run into a Miccosukee camp than into an alligator’s mouth, he said.

“It’s almost kind of comical that the government thinks that, if you put them out here in the Everglades, there’s nowhere to hide,” Stuart said. “The Seminole and the Miccosukee tribes were the only undefeated tribes in the United States. How did they stay undefeated? They used the Everglades to hide and make war in.”

Originally from Kansas, Stuart moved to South Florida about 15 years ago to work in coral reef restoration. But, “my heart kept leading me back to the Everglades,” he said. “It’s always just felt like a home for me.”

Life here is slow and peaceful, unlike in the city, he said. He can still see stars and fireflies at night. The heat doesn’t bother him, and the mosquitoes don’t bite him.

Stuart has been coming to the facility each day, not to protest but to pray. He sits with his drum, shuts his eyes and prays for the government to change its mind and hopes “that nature can forgive us.” A bird flying above Stuart squawked and he smiled.

“The osprey is talking to us now,” he said. “I’m praying for everything.”

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