Many things are wrong with the Florida migrant detention center officially named “Alligator Alcatraz,” but least of these are the gators and pythons that populate the environmentally sensitive Everglades, where the prison is located.

What the Trump administration has created with the facility’s controversial placement is an unsanitary, mosquito-plagued gulag where caged men essentially serve as research subjects for psychological experiments. The proposition presumably being tested is that men imprisoned in crowded, deprived circumstances eventually (how long?) will become deranged and violent, necessitating their deportation.

Though the White House under President Donald Trump might see self-deportation as the hoped-for result of magnifying migrants’ fears with the threat of hellholes such as Alligator Alcatraz, the greater and more loathsome consequence is the dehumanization of those people, mostly brown-skinned, most of whom risked life and limb to seek work and a better life.

This is not to excuse breaking U.S. laws to gain entry, but to point out that the Trump administration — namely Stephen Miller, the president’s top adviser on immigration policy — seems to be trying to change the way Americans see immigrants — not as human beings but as animals deserving less consideration than lab rats. Based on reports from congressional leaders who have visited the white-tented encampment and on inmates’ conversations with reporters and lawyers, rats fare better. History makes clear that, once a group of people is dehumanized, anything can be justified.

The center, hastily constructed on an airstrip in the middle of the Everglades, has no infrastructure for human needs, such as bathrooms and sewage disposal. Each cage housing 32 men contains three exposed toilets (no privacy), and sewage is removed from the area by the truckload. Thus far, about 600 men are incarcerated, but the facility has capacity for 3,000 and room to expand.

Trump’s claim that the detainees are “some of the most vicious people on the planet” is in fact not so. More than a third of those at Alligator Alcatraz (I can’t believe we’re forced to use this phrase) have immigration violations but no criminal convictions or charges in the United States, according to the Miami Herald and the Tampa Bay Times, which obtained a list of more than 700 people either imprisoned or scheduled to be sent to the Florida facility.

“Some are asylum seekers. Others arrived under humanitarian parole, or thought they were here with permission awaiting the result of ongoing legal cases,” the Miami Herald’s editorial board wrote, contrary to Trump’s characterization (“menacing migrants”).

Even if all of them were felons (they are not), all people in the United States have a constitutional right to be treated humanely, if not for their sake, then for the country’s own self-respect and sense of decency. Americans historically have subscribed to laws created to protect, among other rights, human dignity. The worst murderers and rapists — even serial killers — are afforded due process and other essential privileges in a civilized society. What is happening in Florida and at migrant detention centers elsewhere doesn’t come close.

At Alligator Alcatraz, men have complained of infrequent showers and poor hygiene. Lights remain on throughout the night, resulting in sleep deprivation. Overcrowding leads to anxiety and depression. Medications are not delivered as prescribed, and the food — when edible — is sparse. Swarms of mosquitos and other insects have breached the tent city, where the interior climate reportedly fluctuates between freezing and extreme heat.

If these men were puppies, there would be riots. Meanwhile, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem, who shot and killed her own “untrainable” 14-month-old hunting dog Cricket, recently said that ICE detained a “cannibal” who “started to eat himself” on an airplane. On the same day that Noem killed her dog, she also shot her family’s uncastrated goat because it was unruly. Three horses also got bullets from Noem’s sure aim. Well, not so sure: Her first bullet only wounded the poor goat, so Noem ran to her truck (“in tears”) to get another bullet, which did the trick.

Noem bragged about these incidents in print and elsewhere as proof of her resolve to do hard, “necessary” things. One wonders why so many of her animals have had behavioral issues, but it’s no mystery why she and Trump are simpatico. To wit: On Trump’s recent visit to the East Coast version of Alcatraz, as he put it, he told reporters that the government would be teaching detainees how to run from an alligator. Wearing a red cap, this time emblazoned with “Gulf of America,” he moved his hands in the fashion of an alligator’s tail and said: “Don’t run in a straight line. Run like this. And you know what? Your chances go up about 1 percent.”

What a hoot, that guy.

One needn’t be a migrant sympathizer or an environmentalist to find this situation insupportable, especially at a cost of $450 million a year. This president is so incapable of empathy, a new word is needed to describe him. Perhaps “Trumptilian.”

Kathleen Parker’s email address is kathleenparker@washpost.com.