WASHINGTON — At the prospect of Alligator Alcatraz closing, U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said, “Good riddance!”
Wasserman Schultz also said she isn’t giving up on her efforts to follow the money on the detention center for migrants.
“We need to know how much money was spent? Where did these contracts go? Who was really in charge?”
Gov. Ron DeSantis used his state emergency authority to start it and tasked the Florida Division of Emergency Management with the setup and operation. Wasserman Schultz joined the list of lawmakers and attorneys who accused the state of a lack of transparency.
“We didn’t get to see the actual bathroom facilities, the actual dining facilities -- they hid those things from us,” Wasserman Schultz said about her tour of the facility in July at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport.
A judge ordered the state to close the facility by late October. Attorneys with concerns about the environmental impact at the Big Cypress National Preserve in Ochopee and civil rights attorneys challenged the government on Alligator Alcatraz in federal court.
“You were not able to make sure that our laws were being followed, and that people who were detained there, if could even identify by name people who were detained there, were actually able to due process,” Wasserman Schultz said.
FDEM Director Kevin Guthrie wrote on Aug. 22 in an e-mail to Rabbi Mario Rojzman, who wanted to visit detainees, that the facility was probably “going to be down to 0 individuals in a few days,” the Associated Press reported Wednesday.
DeSantis was in Orlando when he attributed the lack of detainees held at the detention facility to the Department of Homeland Security.
“Ultimately, it’s DHS’s decision where they want to process and stage detainees, and it’s their decision about when they want to bring them out,” DeSantis said.
DeSantis said his administration is going to continue to support the President Donald Trump administration’s push for mass deportations.
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