Etsy Users Are Boycotting Over Alligator Alcatraz Merch
These days, you can find just about anything on Etsy: vintage homewares, custom tuxedos for pet poodles, Alibaba-looking jewelry ripoffs — and now, merchandise celebrating gross human-rights violations against migrants. Over the last few weeks, buyers and sellers on the e-commerce platform have been calling to boycott it to protest the influx of “Alligator Alcatraz”–themed products on the website.
The merch items, which include hats, sweatshirts, stickers, and more, are a grotesque salute to the new detention facility the state of Florida built in the Everglades earlier this summer, transforming a remote airfield into a holding center where up to 5,000 migrants are crammed together in trailers and tents and subjected to dehumanizing conditions. And over on Etsy, MAGA heads are making coffee mugs out of it all. Here’s what we know about the boycott.
What is Alligator Alcatraz?
It’s the official name Republicans gave to the new immigration-detention holding center in the Everglades. Congress members who toured the facility this month reported seeing migrants crammed into cages and forced to endure extreme heat, insect infestations, and what a Human Rights Watch report described as “substandard nutrition.” The erection of the facility, which is bordered on all sides by the Big Cypress National preserve, has drawn ire and prompted lawsuits from environmental groups and Indigenous communities whose villages are located less than a thousand feet from the facility’s entrance. Meanwhile, Florida’s attorney general, Trump crony James Uthmeier, has bragged that the state doesn’t need to invest much into the facility’s security because the area around the facility is home to dangerous wildlife like snakes and alligators. And yes, whoever runs the White House’s X account is loving all of it.
And Etsy shops are making merch out of this?
Though the Florida GOP started selling “Alligator Alcatraz” merch before the facility even opened, other merchants were quick to hop on the trend. Take a quick scroll through Etsy’s “Alligator Alcatraz” offerings and you’ll find gator-themed “Make America Safe Again” T-shirts from MAGA crafters, stickers of cartoon ICE gators, prints of a weirdly muscular Trump riding an alligator through swamp waters (or, in some cases, along the Golden Gate strait), and wooden alligators wearing ICE hats.
Though Etsy isn’t the only platform getting in on the Alligator Alcatraz merch market — you can also find similar items on eBay and Amazon — users behind the boycott argue that the merch directly violates Etsy’s Discrimination and Hateful Content policy. The guidelines prohibit hate speech against “content which directly or indirectly contains violent or degrading commentary” against its list of protected classes, which includes “immigration status.” Amazon, meanwhile, told Tech Crunch the merchandise is compliant with its guidelines even though the company forbids products “that promote, incite, or glorify hate or violence towards any person or group.” I guess Amazon thinks this doesn’t count?
How have Etsy users responded?
Despite its content policies, it appears Alligator Alcatraz merch has been proliferating on Etsy for as long as the detention center has existed. So has the pushback from buyers and sellers, who for the past month have been organizing on social media to raise awareness. On Reddit, Threads, Facebook, and X, boycotters have called for Etsy users to report the merchandise, stop using the site, and sell their own products on alternative platforms. “The detention camp of tents being constructed in Florida is dangerous, violates sacred Native land, and is nothing short of a concentration camp for thousands of individuals who are detained without warrants and due process,” one user wrote on Reddit in early July. “Etsy doesn’t have to give this garbage a platform.”
Some sellers say they’ve closed down their shops in protest. “We need to call Alligator Alcatraz what it is. It’s our Auschwitz death camp,” one of them wrote on Threads.
Per Tech Crunch, it isn’t clear how many people are participating in the boycott — efforts to organize across social-media platforms have been disparate, and the Etsy app remains in the top 20 in the “Shopping” category. Calls to boycott have also sparked dissent within the Etsy community, with some users arguing that avoiding the whole platform hurts small artisans who aren’t making detainment-themed merch.
While it does make more sense to see this kind of product on, say, Amazon or the GOP’s merch page, it’s not a huge surprise that it’s ended up front and center on Etsy’s pages. While independent crafts-makers still use the platform to sell their work, the on-site selection has been gradually blurring into Temu territory in recent years. Users have been noticing a high influx of AI-generated shops and say they need to scroll through pages of AI-generated images to get to the good stuff. Sadly, the Alligator Alcatraz products remain fairly easy to find. I wonder why.
What does Etsy have to say?
The company has yet to issue a public statement about the boycotts or the merchandise fueling it. The Cut has reached out to Etsy for comment, and we will update this post if we hear back.
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