Shocking update on 'Alligator Alcatraz' as it's revealed taxpayers spent $250,000,000 on immigration detention site
The prison can hold up to 3,000 detainees in Florida
Alligator Alcatraz has received a startling new update after it came to light just how much it was costing US taxpayers to run.
As President Donald Trump continues focus his efforts on immigration numbers in the US, the Sunshine State (Florida) opened a brand new detention center facility on July 1 this year.
The new center sits at the former Dade-Collier Training and Transport Airport, in the Everglades region, west of Miami, Florida.
Its name? Alligator Alcatraz, which was given to it after it was claimed to have been surrounded by 'alligator and python-infested waters'.
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With the ability to hold around 3,000 people, reports have not been kind about the conditions prisoners are allegedly kept in.
There has been talk of ‘maggots’ in food, no water to bathe in, lights on 24 hours a day, and even more 'torturous' conditions.
Some locked up in the prison have said they haven't 'seen the sun' in days.
This controversial prison has just recently been revealed to have cost the taxpayers $250 million already, and construction is still ongoing.
The latest news is that a Florida official has said the immigration detention facility will most likely be empty within a number of days.
This comes in light of a court battle led by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration and the federal government, against it closing in October, as per The Associated Press.
As of right now, three lawsuits against the center have been filed, challenging practices.
In one of the filings, it claimed that 100 detainees who had been at the facility have been deported, while others have been moved to different immigration detention centers.
The Miami judge ordered the detention center to scale down its operations, and to have the last detainee out within 60 days.
To this, the state of Florida appealed the decision, with the government asking U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams to put her order on hold as the thousands of beds the prison could hold were needed due to other immigration centers being oversubscribed in Florida.
According to correspondence, South Florida Rabbi Mario Rojzman was sent a message on August 22 to provide his chaplaincy services at the facility.
To him, Florida Division of Emergency Management Executive Director Kevin Guthrie said ‘we are probably going to be down to 0 individuals within a few days’.
DeSantis went on to say more about the potential for inmates to be moved from the site, with AP reporting he said: “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.”
However, attorneys for the federal government countered that ‘any decision’ to detain unauthorized immigrants at the center ‘would be Florida’s decision, not DHS’s’.
It added that the facility uses ‘state funds on state lands under state emergency authority.’
The facility once held up to 1,000 detainees, with U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost revealing that during a tour of the prison last week, only 300 to 350 remained.
In a statement to Newsweek a DHS official said: "Under President Trump's leadership, we are working at turbo speed on cost-effective and innovative ways to deliver on the American people's mandate for mass deportations of criminal illegal aliens.
"DHS is complying with this order and moving detainees to other facilities. We will continue to fight tooth-and-nail to remove the worst of the worst from American streets."
The prison is costing taxpayers a lot of money, with state officials having already signed more than $245 million in contracts by July, which aim to build upon the single-runway training airport and remote Everglades.
The facility was also projected to cost $450 million to operate each year after construction had finished, as per CNN.
People online are not happy about the wasted money, with one person getting heated about the wasted $450 million the facility would spend: “NEW: 'Alligator Alcatraz' will reportedly be empty within days — after $450M in taxpayer funds were poured into the controversial detention site. Emails show Florida officials quietly winding it down amid court orders, outrage, and sacred land violations.”
Another wasn’t happy either, commenting that spending 450 million only to close the site ‘is not fiscally conservative’.
Someone else scathed: “One thing this country knows how to do is waste ..”
The reaction to the center has been mixed, with some believing it to be necessary and others thinking its conditions are too cruel.
In an interview with CNN Thomas Kennedy, a policy analyst for the Florida Immigrant Coalition, said: "The fact that we're going to have 3,000 people detained in tents, in the Everglades, in the middle of the hot Florida summer, during hurricane season, this is a bad idea all around that needs to be opposed and stopped."
The appeal against the closure is still active, so it could remain open if the federal government wins its case.
Topics: Social Media, Florida, News, Politics
Britt Jones