Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis got a blow on Wednesday, as Justice Department attorneys torpedoed a key way his state was hoping to pay for an infamous immigrant detention project known as “Alligator Alcatraz.”
According to the Florida Phoenix, federal attorneys have declared that a $608 million federal reimbursement planned to go from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to the state cannot be used to pay for construction or renovation of the facility — only for routine operating expenses. This ruling “breaks from past assertions from both President Donald Trump and the DeSantis administration that the $608 million grant would largely foot the bill for Florida’s state-run detention centers,” the report noted.
In fact, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier acknowledged, the reimbursement may not even happen in the first place.
The filings came in response to a court battle, as Friends of the Everglades, Earthjustice, and the local Miccosukee Tribe, which lives near the facility, try to force courts to subject the facility to federal regulations. As part of avoiding this, federal and state officials must restrict how federal funds flow to it.
“Any potential future federal funding is reimbursement-based, calculated per detainee, and available only for operational costs — not construction or facility modification,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson in a filing. “As it likely will be structured, there will be no potential federal funding of the facility’s design, siting, maintenance, or construction, and no federal approval authority over whether the facility is built at all.”
“Alligator Alcatraz,” essentially a walled-in collection of tents constructed in the Florida Everglades, is a state facility that Trump and DeSantis boasted would house the “worst of the worst” immigrants who pose a threat to public safety.
However, reporting has indicated the facility, where conditions have been described as horrific, is housing any number of non-criminal detainees, including immigrants who were simply pulled over in traffic stops.
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