In an effort to assist the Trump administration in securing the border and enforcing immigration laws, Governor Ron DeSantis has announced that he has authorized a new detention facility at a prison in North Florida.
The governor said the Baker Correctional Institution in Sanderson, which is about 45 miles west of Jacksonville, will be able to hold approximately 1,300 detainees. He said the site is near Lake City Gateway Airport, which would enable deportation flights.
“We are calling this the ‘Deportation Depot,'” DeSantis said at a news conference on Thursday at the site. “We want to process, stage and then return illegal aliens to their home country.”
DeSantis expects the site to be operational soon
The governor said the site will be operational soon, adding that “it is not going to take forever, but we are also not rushing to do this right this day.”
It could take two to three weeks to get the facility operational, according to Kevin Guthrie, the director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, the agency in charge of building the immigration facilities.
The facility has been vacant for several years after it was closed down in 2021 as the state grappled with severe staff shortages, according to the Miami Herald.
“A building that’s been dormant now for a couple of years is going to have some unforeseen challenges,” Guthrie said when estimating the construction timeline.
New site provides ICE with more capacity
After opening the “Alligator Alcatraz” detention site in the Everglades facility last month, DeSantis justified opening the second detention center by saying President Donald Trump’s administration needs the additional capacity to hold and deport more immigrants.
“A lot of illegal aliens can get rounded up, I mean, that’s just the nature of the problem because you’ve had so many come in. We know in Florida there’s anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 that already have final orders of removal. So they are in our country illegally, they’ve already gone through the process and they have been ordered to be removed, and yet nothing had happened. So, we’re working to correct that,” DeSantis said.
The governor said the Department of Homeland Security told him that the state is rounding up undocumented immigrants faster than they can hold, process and deport them. DeSantis said that was the inspiration to construct the “Alligator Alcatraz” detention site in the Everglades. He said many have been processed and flown out of the facility already, and they are doing more and more every day.
“We also said we have the ability to do more than that. DHS, in their agreement with us, because they are reimbursing these expenses, they anticipate up to 5,000. So we said you are probably going to need a different facility if you want to do that many,” DeSantis said.
Alligator Alcatraz at the center of two lawsuits
DeSantis pledged that detainees at the new facility will have “the same services” that are available at the state’s first detention center.
Attorneys for detainees at the Everglades facility have called the conditions there deplorable, writing in a court filing that some detainees are showing symptoms of COVID-19 without being separated from the general population. Rainwater floods their tents and officers go cell-to-cell, pressuring detainees to sign voluntary removal orders before they’re allowed to consult their attorneys.
“Recent conditions at Alligator Alcatraz have fueled a sense of desperation among detainees,” the attorneys said in the court filing.
Conditions at the hastily built detention center were outlined in a filing made Wednesday ahead of a hearing Monday over the legal rights of the detainees. Civil rights attorneys want U.S. District Judge Rodolfo Ruiz to ensure that detainees at the facility have confidential access to their lawyers, which the lawyers say they haven’t had.
Last week, in a second court filing, a federal judge in Miami ordered the state to stop construction at the Everglades site for two weeks amid a legal battle over the potential environmental impacts.
Environmentalists and the Miccosukee Tribe are urging U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams to issue a preliminary injunction halting operations and construction at the site, arguing it threatens sensitive wetlands and endangered wildlife. But Williams said she will not rule until the end of a temporary construction freeze, which expires Aug. 21.
