Five years ago, on Sept. 28, 2021, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an executive order directing law enforcement and other state agencies to protect Floridians from what he called “dangerous Biden Border Crisis” immigrants. As executive orders go, it was a soft-shoe slow dance.
DeSantis didn’t get really tapping until Jan. 6, 2023, when he signed another order declaring immigration an emergency on par with Category 5 hurricanes. With these words, DeSantis raised the curtain on his inhumane anti-immigrant political theater: “(t)he migration of unauthorized aliens to the State of Florida is likely to constitute a major disaster. I therefore declare that a state of emergency exists in the State of Florida.”
He morphed the Florida Department of Emergency Management from hurricane preparation and disaster recovery into the state’s immigrant detention manager — assisted handsomely by the infamous 287(g) agreements that had local law enforcement partner with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection for massive roundups of people with brown and black skin.
And just like that DeSantis turned Florida into a billion-dollar-plus, untrained, bloated, rudderless and catastrophically inhumane monster and gave FDEM an open checkbook funded by taxpayers. He’s renewed the 2023 executive order annually and has never backed down, refusing to acknowledge the financial and humanitarian disaster of his own creation.
DeSantis needed a signature showpiece for his vendetta, so he turned to state Attorney General James Uthmeier, who in June 2025 proposed the Everglades detention center, which he snickeringly named “Alligator Alcatraz.” After all, Florida just wouldn’t grab much national attention if we called it by its official name, the “Florida Soft Sided Facility South.” Plus there was the added advantage, said Uthmeier, that anyone attempting to escape would run smack into alligators, pythons and miles of desolate sawgrass swamp.
Way cool, responded the governor, and since there’s an emergency disaster declaration, we can get around all those pesky environmental, funding and oversight rules. PS: Don’t forget the t-shirts, ball caps, profit and social media fun!
The tent city opened in July 2025. It closed 350 days later. In between, DeSantis spent upwards of $1.2 billion on Alligator Alcatraz and related projects.
Alligator Alcatraz: History won’t treat DeSantis kindly
On Sept. 11, FDEM finally told state legislators the emergency fund is expected to have a $1.5 billion deficit for the fiscal year ending in June 2027. That projection does factor in the possibility of two major hurricanes and four weather-related disasters in addition to its immigration enforcement projects. The state legislature’s Republicans happily partly replenished it with another $250 million last week.
As of June 30, the state owed more than $417 million to more than 590 vendors for immigrant expenses, including hundreds of thousands of dollars owed to city and county governments. The state has another $43.4 million in outstanding invoices related to recent years’ storms.
Not to worry, Florida taxpayers, the feds are gonna cover the costs with a $608 million grant, said DeSantis. Oops, said the feds, not so fast. We’ll maybe contribute some, but this mother of a monument is on you. So far the feds have reimbursed Florida about $85 million for Alligator Alcatraz, and there are few indications more is forthcoming.
From its beginning Alligator Alcatraz has racked up dozens of environmental and humanitarian lawsuits, international disparagement and thousands of reports of detainee abuse. At every turn, DeSantis dismissed complaints as “fake news” from the liberal left.
In December 2025, Amnesty International said, “Florida has become a testing ground for abusive immigration enforcement policies, closely aligned with the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant and racist agenda. Under Governor Ron DeSantis, the state has intensified the criminalization of migration and relied on sweeping emergency powers to rapidly scale up mass detention. Since January 2025, Florida has increased the number of people in immigrant detention by more than 50 percent. Between June and August 2025 alone, the state issued 34 no-bid contracts totaling more than $360 million for ‘Alligator Alcatraz,’ with annual operating costs projected at $450 million — all while cutting billions from essential health, food security, emergency response and housing programs.”
DeSantis ignored them. Just as he’s ignoring this week’s scathing report from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general. That bombshell report — from a federal agency that has itself been a champion for monstrous immigrant abuse — dropped on Sept. 14. It confirms many of the Amnesty International findings, including the torture cages, which DeSantis et al. call “calming areas for personal space.” DeSantis said he didn’t read the DHS report.
I guess we Floridians can be forgiven for losing track of a year-plus fire hose of headlines condemning and defending Alligator Alcatraz and the state’s sordid immigration abuses. But it’s impossible to ignore this: Florida’s immigration policies are a financial and humanitarian disaster. Whether we agree or disagree on immigration policies, Floridians are on the hook for millions of dollars DeSantis continues to promise the feds will cover. Heaven help us if we have another Hurricane Irma. And this governor and his lackeys don’t care. It’s just soulless political theater for them.
Learn more
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DdRlp48G9n2
https://www.flgov.com/eog/sites/default/files/executive-orders/2024/EO-23-03-1.pdf
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