After nearly a year of controversy and several lawsuits, the notorious “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration detention center in Florida is officially shuttering. But Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ explanation for why it’s closing is disingenuous.
At a news conference on Thursday, the governor said Alligator Alcatraz has “fulfilled the role it was designed to serve.” He also said the facility was always meant to be temporary and that its function was merely to expand space for detaining undocumented immigrants awaiting deportation.
“We set it up as an assist for the federal government, which didn’t have the wherewithal to house and stage illegal aliens prior to deportation,” DeSantis said. “The bottom line is that they have the resources, they have the capability now to execute this mission on detention space. We were never going to make that a permanent facility.”
This isolated swampland dungeon was praised by Trump and helped inspire spin-offs. But it came at a steep price.
DeSantis’ account makes it sound as if Alligator Alcatraz was simply a standard detention center meant to temporarily help the Trump administration with space for detainees. In reality, it was designed to degrade immigrants and deter future immigrants from entering the country. However — like so many projects of the MAGA right — it was likely too impractical and politically costly to keep running, and it appears DeSantis has decided he’s had enough of it.
All indications point to Alligator Alcatraz being set up last summer for the purpose of creating a spectacle of domination of undocumented immigrants. It’s not just some coincidence that it was constructed sloppily in just eight days, deep in Everglades swampland teeming with alligators and pythons. Nor is it casual oversight that the facilities packed detainees into cages in reportedly overcrowded tents without adequate sunlight or sanitary facilities, and detainees were forced to put up with maggot-filled food and poor air conditioning. (A former employee at the detention center likened the center to “an oversized kennel.”)
The Trump administration made it clear that the site should be viewed as a form of punishment; former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem warned immigrants that if they did not self-deport, “you may end up here.”
This isolated swampland dungeon was praised by Trump and helped inspire spin-offs. But it came at a steep price: it was under constant legal scrutiny and cost a ton of money.
As Politico reported, “Continuous backlash and lawsuits from civil rights groups, environmental advocates and the Miccosukee Tribe have plagued the facility, which has been accused of violating detainees’ rights and subjecting them to inhumane conditions while harming the surrounding environment.”One of the environmental groups, Friends of the Everglades, told Politico that even with the operation shutting down, its legal challenge will remain active and it will “demand full remediation of the harm.”
Democratic senators also began investigations of allegations of torture at the facility tied to detainee interviewees, in which detainees described being shackled into stress positions in a small box. It’s possible that this factored into DeSantis’ decision.
But another issue — and perhaps the most influential one — is that Florida was bleeding money, spending more than a million dollars a day on the facility. DeSantis had requested a roughly $1.5 billion grant from the federal government to cover the cost, but federal reimbursement has been slow and incremental, and vendors were having trouble fronting costs. According to a May report in The New York Times, which cited a federal official, a former Immigration and Customs Enforcement official and a person close to the DeSantis administration, DHS officials had “concluded that it is too expensive to keep operating the center.” (DHS and DeSantis’ office did not respond to the Times’ requests for comment.)
The financial inefficiency of Alligator Alcatraz was, of course, entirely predictable. Running the facility in such a remote location meant trucking everything in and out, including power generators.
Did the facility serve its purpose in the sense that it sent a message — to U.S. citizens and immigrants alike — of how far MAGA would be willing to go to punish undocumented migration? Perhaps. But much like the infamous prison it’s named after, the spectacle was impractical and expensive, and eventually, even its champions seemed to think it wasn’t worth the hassle.
It’s not a good reason for a morally repugnant detention center to be shut down, but if the outcome is less suffering, that’s ultimately a good thing.
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