Alligator Alcatraz is Almost Shut Down

Last week a judge in Miami ordered the shut down of the detention site known as Alligator Alcatraz. 

U.S. District Judge Kathleen M. Williams entered a preliminary injunction to prevent the installation of any additional industrial-style lighting and any site expansion. Her ruling further prevents “bringing any additional persons … who were not already being detained at the site at the time of this order.”…

Within 60 days, “and once the population attrition allows for safe implementation of this Order,” the facility must also remove “all generators, gas, sewage, and other waste and waste receptacles that were installed to support this project,” the 82-page ruling said.

The site was built near an old airstrip about 40 miles west of Miami in the Everglades. You can’t run a detention center for thousands of people there with no generators or sewage. So the order to remove those things, on the basis of saving the environment, was basically an order to shut the site down completely. The judge’s 60 day deadline meant the site could theoretically stay open until sometime in October. But yesterday, less than a week after the judge’s ruling, there were already reports that the site was nearly empty.

A top Florida official says the controversial state-run immigration detention facility in the Everglades will likely be empty in a matter of days, even as Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration and the federal government fight a judge’s order to shutter the facility dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” by late October. That’s according to an email exchange shared with The Associated Press.

In a message sent to South Florida Rabbi Mario Rojzman on Aug. 22 related to providing chaplaincy services at the facility, Florida Division of Emergency Management Executive Director Kevin Guthrie said “we are probably going to be down to 0 individuals within a few days.” Rojzman, and the executive assistant who sent the original email to Guthrie, both confirmed the veracity of the messages to the AP on Wednesday.

The order to vacate the site was appealed but at this point there is almost no one left at the site. Gov. DeSantis said the decision of how many people are kept at the site is being made by DHS.

On Wednesday, Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, attributed the drop in the detention center’s population to the Department of Homeland Security. He said federal officials were deporting detainees or transferring them out of the facility more quickly, perhaps because of the ongoing litigation in federal court.

“Our role is to provide more space for processing and detention leading to deportation,” Mr. DeSantis said at a news conference in Orlando. “We are not the ones actually removing them from those facilities.”

Even before the judge’s decision, it seems the population held at the site had already dropped from a high of about 1,000 down to a little over 300. The feds may have decided that the site, which had multiple lawsuits filed against it, was more trouble than it’s worth. A new detention site is already being set up at the site of a former prison in northern Florida.

Florida will soon open a second state-run immigration detention center in an empty prison west of Jacksonville, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced on Thursday, growing the state’s contentious effort to crack down on illegal immigration.

The new detention center will be named the “Deportation Depot,” Mr. DeSantis said, again trying to brand a facility that will house federal immigration detainees for maximum political effect…

Unlike the Everglades facility, which was built in June on a remote airfield with little to no infrastructure, the new detention center will operate out of the Baker Correctional Institution in rural Sanderson, Fla. The Florida Department of Corrections closed that facility, which can house about 1,300 detainees, in 2021 as it consolidated several North Florida prisons.

Just in the past few minutes, reports are being published that attempts to pause the wind down of the site have been rejected.

An immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades dubbed “ Alligator Alcatraz ” must keep moving toward shutting down operations by late October, a judge has ruled, even as the state and federal governments fight that decision.

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams late Wednesday denied requests to pause her order to wind down operations at the facility, which has been plagued by reports of unsanitary conditions and detainees being cut off from the legal system.

So that’s probably going to be the end of it. It will cost around $15 million to close the site and another $15 million to reopen it if some appeal eventually comes through for the government. It seems more likely they’ll just walk away from this and set up elsewhere.