The Partial Observer by Teresa Winchester

To Etsy: Remove Alligator Alcatraz Items from Marketplace

Etsy is an online e-commerce company, founded 20 years ago. It is something like a virtual county fair, with sellers having “storefronts” through which they market their wares. It originally offered largely handmade and vintage items or craft supplies. In 2013, Etsy began allowing mass-produced merchandise to be sold.

Alarmingly, a number of Etsy’s mass-produced offerings consist of Alligator Alcatraz merchandise. Baseball caps, T-shirts, sweatshirts and more depict alligators, often wearing ICE caps, in varying degrees of grotesqueness. These items bear dictums such as: “It’s not a prison. It’s a wildlife encounter with life sentences.” “National Institute of Crocodilian Enforcement.” “Welcome to Alligator Alcatraz. Population: Undocumented.”

Comments at the site confirm buyer satisfaction: “Ordered this for my husband and he loves it! Great quality. We will be repeat customers for sure!” wrote one buyer. “I opened my box and this hat was soooo cute! Way better than I thought it was going to be. Love it!” wrote another.

Most objectionable are the items reading “Make America Safe Again.” This false caution perpetuates the myth that President Donald Trump and his followers have been mouthing ad nauseam—that human beings in the United States without papers are violent criminals. Factual studies, however, counter this contention. (Please see below.)

At a time when many are feeling at a loss to do anything effectual about the rapid authoritarian take-over of our country, protesting Etsy’s selling of Alligator Alcatraz products is something that may well reap results. Three actions, given a high rate of participation, can effect a positive outcome.

First, google “Change.org” and search “Alligator Alcatraz.” Choose the petition titled “Enforce Etsy Hate Speech Policy by Banning Alligator Alcatraz Merch.” Sign it. Etsy’s own policies disallow violent or degrading commentary against “protected classes”—one of which is “immigration status.”

Second, for each Alligator Alcatraz item, a flagged notice allows you to “Report this Item to Etsy.” Click on this flag. Then choose “I don’t think it meets Etsy’s policies.” This will take you to the next step—“What’s wrong with this listing?” Here, you can state your objections in your own words. It is possible to click on this flag for each of the 60 or so items offered and point out their shamefulness. With systematic determination, it is possible to comment on all these items in relatively little time. If you can’t do them all, do as many as you can. Four or five items are actually protesting Alligator Alcatraz products, so be mindful of that, too.

Finally, write Etsy CEO Josh Silverman at Etsy, 117 Adams Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201 to protest Alligator Alcatraz merchandise on his site.

The dehumanization inherent in Alligator Alcatraz products is part and parcel of the dehumanizing tactics and rhetoric of the Trump administration toward immigrants. Trump has repeatedly called them “criminals,” “illegal monsters,” and a “threat.” He has characterized immigrants without papers as “murderers, rapists and child predators.” At his urging, immigrants are being hunted down by masked ICE agents as if they were violent criminals. However, Trump’s hate campaign has buried the fact that being an “illegal” immigrant is not a crime. It is a civil infraction.

Once detained, often by unauthorized search and seizure tactics, these immigrants are matriculated into detention centers or sent to unspecified destinations, their whereabouts often unknown even to their family members. Many of the apprehended are in this country legally; others have been following prescribed procedures to obtain legal status. Most have been denied due process.

According to a July 2025 “Fortune” report, ICE statistics show that 71.7 percent of the people detained by ICE had no criminal convictions. The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, has found that “[i]mmigrants, including illegal immigrants, are less likely to be incarcerated in prisons, convicted of crimes, or arrested than native-born Americans.”

The psychological pain of being thrown into miserable conditions and cut off from communication with the outside world, including legal counsel, is cruel and inhumane treatment. In July, the American Civil Liberties Union, along with other groups, filed a lawsuit challenging Alligator Alcatraz for violating due process rights and limiting access to legal counsel. Eunice Cho, senior counsel with the ACLU’s National Prison Project, stated that attorneys have not been able to get clear answers about exactly who runs Alligator Alcatraz. Cho cited reports of officers in the facility pressuring detainees to sign voluntary removal orders without advice of counsel. In one instance, Cho said, an intellectually disabled detainee was told he could get a blanket when in fact he was signing a voluntary departure form allowing his speedy deportation.

With the brutal oversimplicity that characterizes bigots, Trump and his sycophants came up with the plan for Alligator Alcatraz in a mere eight days. They converted the 30-square-mile South Florida Detention Center, surrounded by Big Cypress National Preserve, alligators and snakes, into a made-in-the-USA concentration camp. It could cost American taxpayers as much as $450 million a year to detain people who should not be there in the first place.

Despite the sick attempts to “funnify” Alligator Alcatraz, the facility is no joke. It is a de facto concentration camp which detains human beings in chain-link cages with eight beds to a unit. It is covered by a large white tent, which is said to leak when rain falls.

Reports from the inside, confirmed independently by CBS and “The Miami Herald”/”Tampa Bay Times,” describe cruel and inhumane conditions—mosquitoes, according to one detainee, “as big as elephants.” They are joined by crickets and frogs. Worms and maggots have been reported in meals, served once a day with two minutes to eat. Toilets are often overflowing and the “drinking” water is smelly and undrinkable. Medical access and prescription meds are not forthcoming. Lights are never turned off. Temperatures fluctuate between sweltering and, when air conditioners are running, freezing, sources said.

Etsy’s marketing of Alligator Alcatraz products is beyond shameful. It is hate-perpetuating and must be stopped. Upwards of 19,000 people of conscience have signed the Change.org petition. I urge you to join them and then share the petition’s link with as many others as you can.

Note: On Wednesday, August 20, a U.S. district court judge, citing extreme environmental harm, banned newly apprehended immigrants from being detained at Alligator Alcatraz, giving authorities 60 days to transfer detainees currently imprisoned there. The state of Florida immediately filed an appeal. Nonetheless, there are still some 400 human beings detained in the Everglades facility and the trend of the higher courts has been to overturn lower court rulings adverse to the Trump agenda. Taking action on Etsy’s marketing of Alligator Alcatraz products will still send a strong message that consumers of conscience will not tolerate such practices.

Teresa Winchester is a freelance journalist living in the Town of Butternuts.