Top Florida official says 'Alligator Alcatraz' will likely be empty within days, email shows
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.
A spokesperson for Guthrie, whose agency has overseen the construction and operation of the site, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The facility was rapidly constructed two months ago with the goal of holding up to 3,000 detainees as part of President Donald Trump's push to deport people who are in the U.S. illegally. At one point, it held almost 1,000 detainees, but U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., said that he was told during a tour last week that only 300 to 350 detainees remained. Three lawsuits challenging practices at the detention center have been filed, including one that estimated at least 100 detainees who had been at the facility have been deported. Others have been transferred to other immigration detention centers.
News that the last detainee at “Alligator Alcatraz” could leave the facility within days came less than a week after a federal judge in Miami ordered the detention center to wind down operations, with the last detainee needing to be out within 60 days. The state of Florida appealed the decision, and the federal government asked U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams to put her order on hold pending the appeal, saying that the Everglades facility’s thousands of beds were badly needed since other detention facilities in Florida were overcrowded.
The environmental groups and the Miccosukee Tribe, whose lawsuit led to the judge’s ruling, opposed the request. They disputed the argument that the Everglades facility was needed, especially as Florida plans to open a second immigration detention facility in north Florida that DeSantis has dubbed “Deportation Depot.”
Elise Pautler Bennett, a senior attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups that brought the lawsuit, said the apparent efforts to quickly shutter the facility undermine the arguments the government is making in court that the closure is a hardship that would “compromise the government’s ability to enforce immigration laws.”
“If it was so difficult, they would not have already accomplished it, largely," she said.
As of Wednesday, Williams had not ruled on the request to stay her order.
The judge said in her order that she expected the population of the facility to decline within 60 days by transferring detainees to other facilities, and once that happened, fencing, lighting and generators should be removed.
Environmental groups and the Miccosukee Tribe had argued in their lawsuit that further construction and operations should be stopped until federal and state officials complied with federal environmental laws. Their lawsuit claimed the facility threatened environmentally sensitive wetlands that are home to protected plants and animals and would undermine billions of dollars spent over decades on environmental restoration.
By late July, state officials had already signed more than $245 million in contracts for building and operating the facility at a lightly used, single-runway training airport in the middle of the rugged and remote Everglades. The center officially opened July 1.
In their lawsuits, civil rights attorneys described “severe problems” at the facility which were “previously unheard-of in the immigration system.” Detainees were being held for weeks without any charges, they had disappeared from ICE’s online detainee locator and no one at the facility was making initial custody or bond determinations, they said.
Detainees also had described worms turning up in the food, toilets that didn't flush, flooding floors with fecal waste, and mosquitoes and other insects everywhere.
