Florida intends to shut down a high-profile immigration detention center that it opened last summer in the Everglades, according to a federal official and three people familiar with the facility’s operations.
Officials at the center, known as Alligator Alcatraz, told vendors there on Tuesday afternoon that it was closing, the people familiar with the facility’s operations said.
Vendors were told that detainees would be moved from the facility by the start of June and that the center would be broken down over the following weeks, the three people said. The three people and the federal official all requested anonymity to discuss the closure, which has not yet been made public.
It is unclear where the detainees would go; the federal government runs many other detention centers, including in Florida. The Everglades center, which is run by the state, held about 1,400 detainees as of last month, according to ICE data.
The announcement came days after The New York Times reported that Florida was in talks with the Trump administration to shut down the center, which has cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars to operate since it opened last July. Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, confirmed after the article’s publication that federal and state officials had discussed closing the center.
The Florida Division of Emergency Management, which operates the center, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. Neither did Mr. DeSantis’s office. The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that the agency “continuously evaluates detention needs and requirements to ensure they meet the latest operational requirements.”
Detainees and their relatives and lawyers, as well as immigration activists, have repeatedly denounced unsanitary and inhumane conditions at the center. State officials have consistently dismissed such descriptions as false.
When asked about the center’s future on Monday, Mr. DeSantis did not suggest that a decision was imminent. Speaking to reporters in Fort Myers, Fla., he said that federal officials had not told him they wanted it shut down. But he added that if the federal government stopped sending detainees to the center, the state would not keep it open.
Mr. DeSantis suggested that a second state-run detention center, west of Jacksonville, would remain open even if the Everglades center were to close, and cautioned fellow Republicans not to abandon their aggressive position on immigration enforcement ahead of November’s midterm elections.
“I think it would be a big problem politically to walk away from the deportation mission,” he said.
D.H.S. officials have concluded that the Everglades center is ineffective and too expensive to run. The DeSantis administration has been spending more than $1 million a day to run the center, which is in an isolated area between Miami and Naples.
Florida has yet to receive the $608 million federal reimbursement it requested to run the center for about a year.
Some private vendors the state hired to help operate the center have been struggling to front costs. One vendor, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal from the state, said in an interview last week that the state had not paid some invoices in more than 200 days.
Having financially strained vendors could be problematic for Florida once hurricane season begins on June 1. Many of the same vendors working at the detention center would also be obligated to respond to a hurricane — for example, to remove debris after a storm. Their ability to respond might be limited without sufficient cash to front those costs, the vendor warned in the interview.
Mr. DeSantis said in a news conference in Miami last week that he was unaware of any delays in vendor payments and directed questions to the state’s emergency management division.
Patricia Mazzei is the lead reporter for The Times in Miami, covering Florida and Puerto Rico.
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