Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, spent $1.2 million of taxpayer money a day to open and operate the notorious immigration jail known as Alligator Alcatraz, court records obtained by the independent investigative news website Florida Tributary reveal.
A change of position by Donald Trump’s administration also appears likely to leave Florida on the hook for at least $608 million spent on harsh Everglades detention and deportation facilities and other immigration prisons, the outlet said. That was despite DeSantis gloating in September that the state would be reimbursed with federal funds.
James Uthmeier, DeSantis’ former chief of staff and Florida’s unelected attorney general, last week acknowledged the possibility that a federal reimbursement grant that the governor had insisted was secured might not be delivered after all.
“(Florida) assumed (and still does) the risk that federal funding will not materialize,” Uthmeier and other defendants admitted in a court filing in a lawsuit filed by Friends of the Everglades and several other environmental and civil rights groups.
“Promised funds still ‘likely'”.
The admission essentially confirms that the DeSantis administration took at face value the federal government’s verbal assurances that it would return money to the state, a position the Justice Department appeared to reverse in its own court filing last month.
The department indicated that its lawyers had reviewed the grant program rules for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) and determined that it could reject part or all of the grant application made by the Florida Department of Emergency Management (Fdem) which operates “Alligator Alcatraz.”
“Most importantly, the documents show that Fema may not reimburse Fdem for construction costs and may ultimately reject the requested costs entirely,” the document says.
The dispute over funding is tied to the long-running lawsuit seeking to permanently close the jail. The plaintiffs argued that DeSantis’ promise of U.S. government funding exposed the jail to strict federal environmental laws, Miami District Court Judge Kathleen Williams agreed, and ordered the facility closed in August.
But a three-member appeals panel, including a judge whose lawyer husband works for a company with extensive business ties to the DeSantis administration, blocked the ruling in October. They agreed with the defendants, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security, that because the jail was built using only state funds, federal regulations did not apply.
“This detention center was planned in secret, built in secret, and operated in secret, concealing devastating impacts on Big Cypress National Preserve and the Everglades,” Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades, said in a statement.
“We will not stop fighting until it is safe and the government complies with all environmental laws.”
Meanwhile, the Tributary revelations provide a clearer picture of the remote jail’s murky finances, including accusations by critics that tens of millions of dollars in lucrative no-bid contracts were secretly doled out to the governor’s political allies.
The Associated Press reported in July that DeSantis officials were being vague with local officials about plans for construction of the jail, but were already sending preferred contractors after using an executive order and emergency declaration to seize the site, a remote, barely used airport partially situated on ancestral lands of Native American tribes and owned by Miami-Dade County.
The governor’s office has been contacted for comment.
Noelle Damico, social justice director for the Workers’ Circle, an advocacy group that has organized weekly vigils at “Alligator Alcatraz” since it opened in July, said the developments did not surprise her.
“The lawlessness, woeful lack of accountability and apparent corruption that are integral to these cruel kidnappings, detentions and deportations have corroded trust in our government,” he said.
