OCHOPEE, Fla. — “No American Aushwitz,” and “Free Them” were some of the signs that about a dozen protesters held on Monday outside Alligator Alcatraz, a Florida-run immigration detention center on Miami-Dade County-owned land that records show faces uncertainty on funding.
Nancy Kasten, a Reform rabbi with Texas-based nonprofit Witness At the Border, criticized the use of Federal Emergency Management Agency and Florida Division of Emergency Management funds.
“This does not have anything to do with immigration. This has to do with consolidating power and resources and wealth in the hands of the few at the expense of the many,” Kasten said at the protest. “The emergencies that are created by natural disasters, that’s what the emergency funds are for. Not for emergencies that are created because a government decides to persecute some of its own residents and citizens.”
As FDEM Director Kevin Guthrie sought funding from FEMA, “Florida banked on $1.4 billion in federal funds” for the “Everglades Detention Center,” environmental activists protested on Monday after a legal victory.
“This is a federal immigration detention facility, conceived and constructed on the promise of federal funding. Attempting to delay federal reimbursement to sidestep compliance with federal environmental law is gamesmanship — and will not work," Attorney Paul Schwiep, who represents Friends of the Everglades, said in a statement released on Monday.
The nonprofit organization, founded by the late Marjory Stoneman Douglas in 1969, filed a public records lawsuit against the FDEM in October.
“Guthrie himself concedes that the environmental review required by federal law must occur,” Schwiep said in the statement that included the records released via Dropbox. “That review was required before construction began. Until the mandated review is completed, operation of the facility should cease.”
The court-ordered disclosure comes as Florida lawmakers considered emergency funding laws.
In Tallahassee, Florida Senate Bill 7040: Emergency Preparedness and Response Fund/Executive Office of the Governor passed on Feb. 11. The Florida House committee on appropriations approved FHB 5503: Trust Funds/Re-creation/Emergency Preparedness and Response Fund/EOG unanimously on Sunday.
“We hope the reimbursement is as was promised, and the federal government, for better or worse, seems to always take time to do the ledger of the dollar,” said Florida Sen. Ed Hooper, the appropriations committee’s chair.
“Florida is setting the example for states in combating illegal immigration,” DeSantis said in a statement released on Feb. 19, 2025, in support of President Donald Trump’s policy of mass detentions and deportations.
The Miami-Dade Aviation Department had been “exploring” ways “to generate revenue” at the Dade Collier Training and Transition Airport, or TNT, before Alligator Alcatraz opened early July.
Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem toured Alligator Alcatraz on July 1.
“Alligator Alcatraz will be funded largely by FEMA’s Shelter and Services Program, which the Biden administration used as a piggy bank to spend hundreds of millions of American taxpayer dollars to house illegal aliens, including at the Roosevelt Hotel,” Noem wrote on Instagram.
“I announced that Baker Correctional Institution in Sanderson will now serve as a Deportation Depot to detain and process illegal immigrants for removal, building on the success the state has had with Alligator Alcatraz,” DeSantis said in an Aug. 14 statement from his office that added, “Costs will be reimbursed by federal partners.”
The state records included in the court-ordered release show a back-and-forth between the state and the feds. It included an FDEM application for a $1.49 billion federal grant that had been allocated for $608.4 million.
The records also included a state’s revision that described Alligator Alcatraz as the South Florida detention facility, and Detention Depot as the North Florida detention facility.
The total state funding for Alligator Alcatraz was more than $807.4 million, with $243.36 million in federal funding. The total state funding for Detention Depot was more than $294.7 million, with $365.04 million in federal funding, according to the records.
Earlier this year, in late January, DHS attributed the Alligator Alcatraz to the 287(g) program, which allows ICE to partner with local law enforcement.
Also in late January, human rights activists with London-based Amnesty International called for Alligator Alcatraz’s closure.
“There have been reports of unsanitary conditions, including overflowing toilets and no working showers – lack of medical care, and minimal access to lawyers," the advocates wrote. “The only answer is for the facility to be shut down and for US authorities to dismantle the mass detention and deportation machine.”
Records in the Friends of the Everglades case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit showed that Florida Attorney General James Uthemeier argued on Feb. 24 that the state carried the burden.
“The State constructed and operated the facility, and the federal government had no say in whether or how the State proceeded,” Uthemeier wrote. “The State took the risk (still does) that federal funding will not materialize.”
Related story
- Florida lawmakers discuss who will foot bill for Alligator Alcatraz
- Civil rights attorneys mark victory for Alligator Alcatraz detainees
- On Sunday, Florida Trib: New records show Florida officials burned more than $1.2 million per day on ‘Alligator Alcatraz’
- On Sunday, Florida Phoenix: Feds block millions for ‘Alligator Alcatraz,’ ‘Deportation Depot’ over pending environmental review
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