Trump Calls Biden a ‘Son of a Bitch’ During Alligator Alcatraz Tour

President Donald Trump took a swipe at former President Joe Biden on Tuesday, July 1, as he toured a new Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in the Florida Everglades.

Trump surveyed the controversial new facility, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” alongside Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and members of the press. The massive warehouse, full of chain link dividers and hundreds of bunk beds, will be a holding area for ICE detainees as the Trump administration continues to ramp up deportation efforts.

“Biden wanted me in here, okay?” Trump told reporters while standing in the holding facility. “It didn’t work out that way, but he wanted me in here, that son of a bitch.”

Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records on May 30, 2024, just months before he was reelected for a second presidential term. Despite the unanimous jury verdict, and the fact that his charges carried a penalty of up to four years in prison, Trump was granted “unconditional discharge” and was not imprisoned, fined, or put on probation.

During the sentencing announcement, prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said that — while the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office ultimately recommended unconditional discharge out of respect for the office of the presidency — he did not want to downplay Trump’s “unsubstantiated attacks” on the rule of law and his “coordinated campaign” to undermine the jury’s conclusion.

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Trump also faced two federal indictments in 2023 over his handling of classified documents and alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and an additional indictment in Georgia that was also related to election subversion. The cases were closed upon his reelection.

Despite Trump peddling a conspiracy theory that Biden orchestrated the charges against him, the federal government was not involved in the New York case that led to a conviction. And though Biden was president at the time that the federal indictments against Trump were dropped, he has maintained that he had no influence over the Justice Department’s investigations. (Biden’s own son, Hunter, was tried and convicted by the DOJ during his presidency.)

Meanwhile, Alligator Alcatraz — where Trump took his latest jab at Biden — will house up to 5,000 of the detainees arrested daily as part of Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

The center was built in just eight days on the abandoned Everglades Jetport, and the administration has touted the area’s surrounding wildlife — which includes alligators, panthers and pythons — as an added measure of security.

“You don’t always have land so beautiful and so secure [with] a lot of bodyguards and a lot of cops in the form of alligators that you don’t have to pay them so much,” Trump told reporters.

However, the opening of the detention center was met by plenty of protestors. Some followed in the footsteps of anti-ICE protests that have cropped up nationwide since Inauguration Day. Others, however, were concerned about the environmental impact of the site within the Big Cypress National Preserve.

Environmental groups have objected to the Florida government’s assertion that the development will have no impact on the unique Everglades ecosystem. Three groups sued to stop the fast-tracked construction, arguing that it left no time for environmental reviews required by the National Environmental Policy Act.

“The site is more than 96% wetlands, surrounded by Big Cypress National Preserve, and is habitat for the endangered Florida panther and other iconic species. This scheme is not only cruel, it threatens the Everglades ecosystem that state and federal taxpayers have spent billions to protect,” said Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades.

The area also holds significance for local Native American groups. According to The Associated Press, Big Cypress is home to 15 traditional Miccosukee and Seminole villages, in addition to ceremonial and burial grounds.

“Rather than Miccosukee homelands being an uninhabited wasteland for alligators and pythons, as some have suggested, the Big Cypress is the Tribe’s traditional homelands. The landscape has protected the Miccosukee and Seminole people for generations,” Miccosukee Chairman Talbert Cypress wrote in a statement on social media last week.