MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. — The local officials who are facing criticism over a controversial detention center for undocumented migrants met on Monday to celebrate another project on Miami-Dade County-owned land.
U.S. Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart and Carlos Gimenez, and Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava marked a step forward on a $141 million project to process imports near Miami International Airport.
Officials described the project as the country’s future largest public “phytosanitary and cold chain processing facility” used to inspect imported perishable goods such as flowers and fruits.
“It’s going to reduce spoilage and inspection delays,” Levine Cava said during her speech about the project that will change PortMiami operations.
Díaz-Balart praised local Democrats and fellow Republicans for their teamwork.
“If this had not happened, I would tell you it would have been catastrophic for our seaport,” Díaz-Balart said during his speech about PortMiami’s capacity to remain competitive.
Since Alligator Alcatraz, a new tented detention center, is also a result of teamwork on Miami-Dade County-owned land, Díaz-Balart also faced questions about it.
While on the defense, Díaz-Balart described Keep Them Honest, a nonprofit organization that put up a “Díaz-Balart You Betrayed Us” billboard along the Palmetto Expressway, as a radical leftist group.
“They have the right to do that,” Díaz-Balart said about the First Amendment protections that allowed the group to display the billboard.
Gov. Ron DeSantis tasked the Florida Division of Emergency Management with the center that contractors are helping to run in Collier County’s Ochopee, a remote community in the Big Cypress National Preserve.
Democrats argued that the law hasn’t been so clear on the county, state, and federal collaboration behind Alligator Alcatraz, a network of tents and trailers plagued with problems at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport.
Republicans have argued that the detention center in Collier County meets standards, and it’s supposed to help reduce the overpopulation of jails that have inmates with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holds.
“I saw it; I visited it,” Díaz-Balart said adding, “Detention centers are never a place that any of us want to spend the day.”
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