The immigration detention facility known as “Alligator Alcatraz” will be alligators-only soon, with internal emails suggesting that the last detainee will be gone within days.
The Associated Press reported on an email exchange in which a senior Florida official wrote, “We are probably going to be down to 0 individuals within a few days.”
Kevin Guthrie, the Executive Director of Florida’s Division of Emergency Management (FDEM), sent the email in an exchange with South Florida Rabbi Mario Rojzman focused on chaplaincy services at the facility.
The revelation comes less than a week after a federal judge ordered officials to begin dismantling the facility, which has become a lightning rod of controversy over its two-month existence.
Constructed over the course of 8 days on an air strip in the Florida Everglades and officially called the South Florida Detention Facility, Alligator Alcatraz has been labelled an “internment camp” and an “oversized kennel.”
It cost an estimated $245 million of taxpayer money to construct, and Governor Ron DeSantis said it would eventually hold 4,000 detainees set for deportation.
However, the facility has not topped 1,000 detainees since it opened on July 1. Last week, Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) said after a tour that only about 300 to 350 detainees remained.
The Miami Herald has reported that “hundreds” of the prisoners who were held in the facility have no criminal record in the U.S.
The facility is also facing multiple lawsuits, but the one that ultimately sealed its fate focused on its environmental impact.
It is unclear how quickly the facility will be dismantled once the last detainee has been removed. Florida is appealing the court’s decision, and the federal government is asking Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams to put her order to dismantle it on hold pending the appeal.
President Trump toured the facility in July, a day before detainees arrived.
“We’re going to teach them how to run away from an alligator,” Trump said of the migrants who would be held there.
The administration has struggled to find enough beds to house migrants as it tries to reach a quota of 3,000 arrests per day.
It has housed migrants in a Marriott hotel in Louisiana and the top floor of the federal building in Manhattan, both of which came under fire.
The Daily Beast has contacted DHS and FDEM for comment.
The post Alligator Alcatraz ‘Going Down to 0’ Detainees in Just Days According to Leaked Email appeared first on The Daily Beast.
