“Alligator Alcatraz”? More like Alligator Albatross.
Remember when Alligator Alcatraz, Florida’s massive immigrant detention center, opened? It was just last summer, and President Donald Trump toured the facility. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt gushed over how great it was that it was “isolated and surrounded by dangerous wildlife.” Then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem declared that the federal government would fund it with Federal Emergency Management Agency funds and boasted about “our partnership with Florida.”
But the good times didn’t last, and now Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis seems positively sweaty, desperate to get rid of the thing, saying it was always temporary and that there was always a plan to wind it down. And possibly very soon.
DeSantis is right to be worried. This expensive abomination hangs firmly around his neck and his neck alone. Florida fronted its cost, but the state was supposed to be reimbursed to the tune of more than $600 million from DHS.
Attribution: APPresident Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, and others tour “Alligator Alcatraz,” a new migrant detention facility at Dade-Collier Training and Transition facility, in July 2025 in Ochopee, Florida.
But then came the lawsuit alleging that the federal government skipped the required environmental review, at which point both Florida and the administration said that the federal government had nothing to do with it at all, why would you possibly think that?
That argument won the day at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and that’s allowed the detention center to remain open, but now DeSantis is the dog who caught the car. He has permission to keep running his concentration camp, but he has to pay for it. If the federal government reimburses Florida or starts covering costs in other ways, the environmental review problem likely can’t be sidestepped.
Now, DeSantis is saddled with it, and the state is spending over $1 million per day to run the thing. DHS has apparently soured on it as well, though why they get to weigh in when we’re pretending they have nothing to do with it is a bit of a mystery. DeSantis is now saying that it would be “great” to unwind the entire thing and turn the space back into a training airport.
That $1 million per day could have gone a long way to helping Floridians rather than just tormenting immigrants. Thirty percent of Florida residents are considered low income, over 18% of the state’s children face hunger, and housing insecurity is rampant.
DeSantis is so dedicated to screwing over the people in his state that he once turned down federal funds that would have helped feed kids in low-income families. The state also refused to expand Medicaid, which would have helped nearly 800,000 Floridians. The state’s social safety net is perilously thin, and there are a lot of programs that could use even one day of Alligator Alcatraz’s operating budget.
For example, as of the 2024-25 fiscal year, the entire yearly budget for the Feeding Rural North Florida program is $1 million. The state slashed that from $2 million the previous year. The entire yearly budget for the Feeding Florida food banks is $6.5 million, cut from $8 million the year before.
Ten days of Alligator Alcatraz funding could have funded both at their previous, higher amounts for a year.
DeSantis built Alligator Alcatraz on the backs of the poorest people in his state, but he always counted on DHS giving him $600 million to paper that over a bit. But now that may not happen.
DeSantis’s ongoing quest to either impress Trump, be Trump, or both has jammed him up here. His unique combination of malice and incompetence meant that the Trump administration could always fake him out, and now the state is left holding this very expensive bag.
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