Ron DeSantis spent approximately $1.2 million per day in taxpayer funds to launch and manage the controversial immigration detention center dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” according to court documents obtained by the investigative outlet Florida Tributary.
A change in stance by the administration of President Donald Trump could now leave Florida responsible for at least $608 million tied to the Everglades-based detention and deportation complex and related immigration facilities. The development comes despite DeSantis’s earlier claims in September that the state would receive full reimbursement through federal funding.
James Uthmeier, DeSantis’s former chief of staff and Florida’s unelected attorney general, acknowledged last week that the federal reimbursement grant long described as secured may ultimately not arrive.
“[Florida] took the risk (and still does) that federal funding will not materialize,” Uthmeier and fellow defendants conceded in a court filing in a lawsuit brought by Friends of the Everglades and a number of other environmental and civil rights groups.
“Promised funds are still only ‘likely’.”
The filing effectively confirms that the DeSantis administration relied on verbal commitments from federal officials that the state would be repaid, a position the justice department appeared to reconsider in its own court submission last month.
The department stated its attorneys reviewed grant guidelines for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) and concluded that it could reject part or all of the funding request submitted by the Florida Division of Emergency Management, which operates the facility known as “Alligator Alcatraz.”
“Crucially, the documents show that Fema may not reimburse Fdem for construction costs, and may ultimately disallow the requested costs altogether,” the filing said.
The funding dispute is connected to an ongoing lawsuit seeking the permanent closure of the detention center. Plaintiffs argued that DeSantis’s assurances of federal backing subjected the jail to strict federal environmental regulations. Miami district court judge Kathleen Williams agreed and ordered the facility closed in August.
However, a three-judge appellate panel, including one judge whose attorney spouse is employed by a company with significant business relationships with the DeSantis administration, halted that order in October. The panel sided with the defendants, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security, determining that because the detention center was constructed solely with state funds, federal environmental rules did not apply.
“This detention facility was planned in secret, built in secret and operated in secret, concealing devastating impacts to Big Cypress National Preserve and the Everglades,” Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades, said in a statement.
“We won’t stop fighting until it’s safe and the government complies with all environmental laws.”
The Florida Tributary’s reporting provides additional insight into the complex financial structure surrounding the remote facility, including allegations from critics that tens of millions of dollars in no-bid contracts were quietly awarded to political allies of the governor.
Earlier coverage by the Associated Press indicated that DeSantis officials offered limited details to local authorities about construction plans, even as preferred contractors were deployed under an executive order and emergency declaration to take control of the site. The property, a little-used airport partly located on ancestral Indigenous land and owned by Miami-Dade County, became the location for the detention center.
Noelle Damico, director of social justice at Workers Circle, an advocacy organization that has staged weekly vigils at “Alligator Alcatraz” since it opened in July, said the latest disclosures were unsurprising.
“The lawlessness, woeful unaccountability, and apparent corruption that are part and parcel of these cruel abductions, detentions and deportations has corroded trust in our government,” she said.
