OCHOPEE, Fla. — Florida is in talks with the Trump administration to shut down the Alligator Alcatraz migrant detention facility, according to a report from The New York Times.
The controversial facility, located in the heart of the Florida Everglades, was opened last summer and has reportedly cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars.
The shutdown talks are preliminary, according to people close to Gov. Ron DeSantis who spoke to the Times.
Officials at the Department of Homeland Security have reportedly concluded that it is too expensive to keep operating the detention center.
A federal official told the publication that DHS has come to consider the center as ineffective.
The DeSantis administration has been spending more than $1 million a day to run Alligator Alcatraz and some private vendors hired by the state to operate it have been struggling to keep up with costs.
As of last month, the center held nearly 1,400 detainees -- all of them men, according to data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
DeSantis has said from the start that the federal government would pay for the facility, but Florida has yet to receive the $608 million federal reimbursement to run the center over the past year.
The Department of Homeland Security and the Florida Department of Emergency Management did not respond to The Times’ request for comment as of the time of publication.
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