The Trump administration is expediting plans for a new Florida detention site for undocumented migrants awaiting deportation by tapping into funds that had been set aside to house asylum seekers during the Biden administration.
“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,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement. “We will expand facilities and bed space in just days, thanks to our partnership with Florida.”
Noem said the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will use money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)’s Shelter and Services Program to build out the Miami-area project, which has been dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” through the Florida Division of Emergency Management (FDEM).
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is backing the plan and on Monday his administration moved to take over the proposed property after failing to reach an agreement with local officials over costs.
“Governor DeSantis has insisted that the state of Florida, under his leadership, will facilitate the federal government in enforcing immigration law,” the governor’s office said in a statement to The Hill, outlining DHS’s approval of federal funding for the project. “Florida will continue to lead on immigration enforcement.”
FDEM director Kevin Guthrie wrote in a letter to Miami-Dade Mayor Levine Cava (D) that the state would begin immediately using the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport under the governor’s emergency powers authority.
“Time is of the essence,” he wrote. “We must act swiftly to ensure readiness and continuity in our statewide operations to assist the federal government with immigration enforcement.”
Cava’s office didn’t immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment.
Under DHS’s approved plans, the FDEM is expected to build and manage the facility, which will be used for migrants arrested in the Sunshine State and U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) transfers.
An initial temporary site could open in days for hundreds of detainees, with expansions through July. When running, the facility is projected to cost about $450 million a year.
Noem accused former President Biden of using the FEMA fund “as a piggy bank to spend hundreds of millions of American taxpayer dollars to house illegal aliens, including at the Roosevelt Hotel that served as a Tren de Aragua base of operations that was used to shelter Laken Riley’s killer.”
Venezuelan migrant José Antonio Ibarra, 26, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison last fall for killing Riley, a 22-year-old Georgia nursing student. Ibarra’s former roommate testified during his trial that Ibarra lived at the taxpayer-funded migrant shelter at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City before moving to Georgia.
FEMA funds were given to New York Mayor Eric Adam’s migrant housing program, which included the shuttered midtown Manhattan hotel, to accommodate the influx of thousands of asylum-seekers following the COVID-19 outbreak and Biden’s election.
Trump kicked off a sweeping immigration crackdown shortly after returning to the White House in January that prioritized deportations and eliminated funding for housing services for migrants.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier pitched the idea last week of detaining undocumented migrants at an unused 39-square-mile site near the Everglades and coined it as a potential “Alligator Alcatraz.”
“People get out, there’s not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons —nowhere to go, nowhere to hide,” he said in a video touting the swampy site on the social platform X. “Within just 30 to 60 days after we begin construction, it could be up and running and could house as many as 1,000 criminal aliens.”
Uthmeier’s office didn’t immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment on DHS’s update.