The Florida Everglades immigration detention center dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” which Gov. Ron DeSantis says “made the state of Florida safer,” has now officially closed after “serving its purpose.”
The makeshift facility, which opened in July of last year and helped deport 21,000 illegal aliens, was always meant to be temporary until permanent centers were secured, the governor said at a news conference at the facility Thursday.
“Today it now has zero detainees,” he said. “It has helped remove many, many dangerous people from the street and get them not only out of the state of Florida but the United States of America.”
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) now has the capacity to handle detainees at other facilities. But last year it did not, and the state stepped in to fill the facility “gap” created by the Trump administration’s massive roundup of criminal illegal aliens, many of them coming into the country during the Biden administration.
“There’s no question that this mission made the state of Florida safer,” DeSantis said. “There’s no question that releasing some of these folks would have represented a clear and present danger to the wellbeing of Floridians up and down the Florida peninsula.”
DeSantis said that after the facility’s closure he will continue to “support this important mission of immigration enforcement,” including honoring agreements with the federal government to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The facility was hailed as secure and humane by Trump administration officials but denounced by political adversaries and civil rights groups.
Immigration advocates and liberal news outlets like the Daily Beast portrayed the large tents as unsafe and not humane for holding people.
According to the left-wing outlet:
A damning report by Amnesty International documented “delays in intake procedures, overcrowding in temporary processing areas, inadequate and inaccessible medical care, alarming disciplinary practices including the use of prolonged solitary confinement, and challenges in access to legal representation and due process” at Alligator Alcatraz.
Detainees at the facility have talked about their difficulty accessing lawyers “and described poor physical conditions, including worms in the food, toilets that didn’t flush, floors flooded with fecal waste, and mosquitoes and other insects everywhere,” the Associated Press reported.
The tents featured bunk beds surrounded by chain-link cages.
Florida continues to play a key role with other detention centers and an increasing role in helping with immigration enforcement, White House border czar Tom Homan said at Thursday’s news conference.
“Gov. DeSantis did a good job, and he’s going to continue doing what he’s doing to help us make this country safe again,” Homan said. “This isn’t the end of relationship. This is a continuation.”
Breitbart contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of the Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
