Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) said on Thursday it was “always” his intention to close “Alligator Alcatraz,” amid rumors Florida is in talks with the government to shut down the federal immigration detention center.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in the Florida Everglades has sparked controversy, due largely to environmental and humanitarian concerns, since DeSantis said it opened for “aggressive deportation” last July. The governor has declared it a success, but suggested this week it could be winding down after processing and deporting around 22,000 detainees.
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“At some point, we will, of course, break it down. That was always the goal,” DeSantis said at a news conference in Lakeland. “If we shut the lights out tomorrow, we will be able to say it served its purpose.”
His words came the same day the New York Times reported that the Department of Homeland Security is in talks with Florida officials to shut down the ICE facility due to high operational costs. Florida has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to operate the facility since it opened, according to the report.
“It’s been discussed,” DeSantis said Thursday of winding the facility down. “I said on Day One it was going to be temporary. We didn’t know how long, because we didn’t know what funding was going to be passed, how the DHS would stand up all this stuff. But it is going to be temporary.”
“It makes sense that DHS is evaluating what their footprint is, how they can best accomplish the mission,” he added. “If they can handle that, then yeah, that would be great for us to break that facility down.”
A DAY WITH FLORIDA STATE TROOPERS NABBING ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS FOR ‘ALLIGATOR ALCATRAZ’
The ICE facility is known as Alligator Alcatraz due to the 200,000 alligators that live in the surrounding swampland. The property was mostly an abandoned airfield in the Everglades before Florida officials transformed it into an operation that played a key role in helping Florida cooperate with the Trump administration’s deportation effort, giving the state a place to house illegal immigrants before being sent back to their home countries.
Alligator Alcatraz has been the subject of several lawsuits, including one from environmental activists and a tribal group, who argued the facility in the natural wetland must go through a federal environmental review. An appeals court last month handed a win to the DeSantis administration in the case, ruling that the facility could stay open and is not subject to an environmental review.
