Officials in Florida are moving forward with plans to construct a second detention center for housing immigrants, as part of the state’s forceful efforts to bolster the federal government’s campaign against illegal immigration.
Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican, announced on Wednesday that he is contemplating establishing a facility at the Florida National Guard training site known as Camp Blanding, located roughly 30 miles (48 kilometers) southwest of Jacksonville in northeast Florida. This proposal is in addition to another site being built at a secluded airstrip in the Everglades, which state officials have nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz.”
The development of the facility in the isolated and environmentally delicate wetland about 45 miles (72 kilometers) west of downtown Miami has raised concerns among environmentalists and human rights advocates, who have criticized the plan as harsh and inhumane.
Speaking to reporters at an event in Tampa, DeSantis touted the state’s muscular approach to immigration enforcement and its willingness to help President Donald Trump’s administration meet its goal of more than doubling its existing 41,000 beds for detaining migrants to at least 100,000 beds.
State officials have said the detention facility, which has been described as temporary, will rely on heavy-duty tents, trailers, and other impermanent buildings, allowing the state to operationalize 5,000 immigration detention beds by early July and free up space in local jails.
“I think the capacity that will be added there will help the overall national mission. It will also relieve some burdens of our state and local (law enforcement),” DeSantis said.
Managing the facility “via a team of vendors” will cost $245 a bed per day, or approximately $450 million a year, a U.S. official said. The expenses will be incurred by Florida and reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
In the eyes of DeSantis and other state officials, the remoteness of the Everglades airfield, surrounded by mosquito- and alligator-filled wetlands that are seen as sacred to Native American tribes, makes it an ideal place to detain migrants.
“Clearly, from a security perspective, if someone escapes, you know, there’s a lot of alligators,” he said. “No one’s going anywhere.”
Democrats and activists have condemned the plan as a callous, politically motivated spectacle.
“What’s happening is very concerning, the level of dehumanization,” said Maria Asuncion Bilbao, Florida campaign coordinator at the immigration advocacy group American Friends Service Committee.
“It’s like a theatricalization of cruelty,” she said.
DeSantis is relying on state emergency powers to commandeer the county-owned airstrip and build the compound, over the concerns of county officials, environmentalists and human rights advocates.
Now the state is considering standing up another site at a National Guard training facility in northeast Florida as well.
“We’ll probably also do something similar up at Camp Blanding,” DeSantis said, adding that the state’s emergency management division is “working on that.”
