Alligator Alcatraz: A legal black hole, hidden in a swamp

Florida in Five: Five stories to read from the past week in Florida politics.

Photo credit: U.S. Department of Homeland Security / Wikipedia Commons

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Welcome to another installment of Florida in Five: Five* stories you need to read from the past week in Florida politics.

There are a few basic bars you have to clear if you want to become a police officer or prison guard in Florida.

You must, for instance, submit to fingerprinting and allow your prints to be searched and stored in a criminal justice database. You must pass a physical exam. And you must undergo a background investigation to ensure you “have a good moral character” — that you haven’t physically or sexually abused someone or stolen from a previous employer, that sort of thing.

Unless, that is, you want to work at the new immigration detention camp that Florida just opened in the middle of the Everglades — the mosquito- and feces-infested facility that a bunch of poison-souled politicians have nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz.”

That’s because Gov. Ron DeSantis has given the contractors hired to run the Everglades detention center permission to ignore state law and staff it with contractor-employed correctional officers who haven’t been fingerprinted, passed a physical, or cleared a background check.

It’s not the only law that Florida’s Republican governor suspended as his administration rushed to complete the cages-in-tents camp, which has been built on an isolated airfield 50 miles west of Miami and is now being used to hold people rounded up under President Donald Trump’s mass deportation program. DeSantis is able to suspend state laws using extraordinary legal powers he granted to himself when he declared a statewide state of emergency over immigration in January 2023 — a declaration that was initially only supposed to last for two months but is now in its third year.

For instance, as vendors raced to complete the facility before a July 2 visit from Trump, DeSantis also suspended permitting rules for portable toilets and safety laws for truck drivers.

Complying with the truck-safety laws “would hinder the rapid repurposing and deployment of necessary commercial motor vehicles,” Kevin Guthrie, the DeSantis appointee who runs Florida’s Division of Emergency Management, wrote in an emergency order issued June 28 — less than a week before Florida began locking immigrants inside the facility.

An excerpt from from the June 28 emergency order issued by the Division of Emergency Management.

Altogether, DeSantis has used his immigration state of emergency powers to unilaterally lift more than half a dozen laws and rules — giving he and his aides freedom to hand out no-bid contracts, pay overtime to senior managers, and buy boats, planes and cars.

Suspending those procurement laws has enabled the DeSantis administration to rapidly issue more than $150 million worth of taxpayer-financed contracts and purchase orders connected to the detention camp at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, which is known by the airport code TNT, according to a review of a state purchasing database.

Some of the new contracts and purchase orders issued in connection with the immigration detention facility at the TNT airport. (Source: Seeking Rents research)

DeSantis also used his expansive emergency powers to seize the land itself — commandeering the TNT airport from its owner, Miami-Dade County, after his administration made a lowball offer to buy the site that county leaders rejected.

And where the DeSantis administration hasn’t suspended laws, he is simply flouting them. Like when a group of Democratic lawmakers showed up to inspect the camp, citing state laws that permit members of the Florida Legislature to visit prisons and detention facilities “at their pleasure.” DeSantis administration officials denied them entry without citing any legal basis to do.

Then there’s the state law — a law DeSantis himself signed — that requires Florida’s Auditor General to audit all expenditures and contracts entered into any state of emergency that extends beyond one year.

But the Orlando Sentinel’s Jeff Schweers revealed last week that not a single such audit has ever been done during the two-and-a-half years that DeSantis has kept Florida in a state of emergency over immigration. The Auditor General’s Office apparently decided that it would be too hard to comply with the law. So it didn’t.

The DeSantis administration has even been pushed the Trump administration to suspend its own detention center standards — so immigrants can instead be forced into hastily constructed camps like Florida’s, where detainees have reported worms in the food, feces on the floor, and delays in accessing prescription medication.

“…We encourage suspension of the National Detention Standards (NDS) presently in use by ICE’s Enforcement Removal Operations (ERO) division,” Florida officials wrote in an “immigration enforcement” plan pitched the Trump administration about a month before they announced their Everglades detention camp.

“NDS suspension would not only open up bedspace in innumerable county jails to house arrested aliens but also pave the way to set up soft-side detention as needed and desirable,” Florida officials added in their proposal. “For instance, to provide for detention colocation next to Federal- or State-owned landing/takeoff runways that could be used to establish routine air corridors to those nations routinely receiving repatriated illegal aliens.”

Of course, Ron DeSantis isn’t the only politician evading laws here.

A coalition of environmental groups have sued the U.S. Department of Homeland Security trying to have Florida’s Everglades detention camp shut down because the project failed to comply with federal environmental laws.

The Trump administration has responded by claiming in court that it has no real role in the project and therefore no responsibility to comply with those federal environmental laws — even though DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has repeatedly and publicly boasted about the Trump administration’s involvement in the facility.

In fact, when you add it all up — the suspended and sidestepped laws, the evasions of responsibility, the no-bid contracts, the nearly three-year-long “state of emergency” — one thing is becoming quite clear about Alligator Alcatraz:

The politicians running the place are bigger lawbreakers than many of the immigrants they’re locking up.

*To paraphrase Barbossa, five is more what you’d call a guideline than an actual rule.

How a coward kowtows to a billionaire

In a first, Gov. DeSantis lets non-compete bill become law sans signature (Tallahassee Democrat) ($)

See also: Lobbyist for a billionaire-run hedge fund wrote a bill allowing longer non-competes, records show (Seeking Rents)

DeSantis-style democracy

She lost her Hillsborough school board bid. Now she’s on the State Board. (Tampa Bay Times) ($)

See also: Losing Broward school board candidate appointed to State Board of Education (Florida Phoenix)

See also: A Florida school board candidate lost his race. DeSantis appointed him to the board anyway (Associated Press)

See also: Hillsborough judge who lost re-election is appointed to Court of Appeal by Gov. DeSantis (WUSF)

The Florida Way

Florida’s Home Insurance Crisis Hits Hardest in Some of the State’s Poorest Counties (Inside Climate News)

See also: This summer, food gets harder to come by for Florida families (Tampa Bay Times) ($)

Smoke is still billowing

Odd, unexplained payments raise more questions about Hope Florida (Orlando Sentinel) ($)

The work of dark-hearted ghouls

Hundreds at Alligator Alcatraz have no criminal charges or convictions, records show (Miami Herald) ($)

See also: DACA recipient from Orange County among those at Alligator Alcatraz, attorney says (Orlando Sentinel) ($)

See also: Alligator Alcatraz firm donated to Florida GOP before getting a contract (Tampa Bay Times) ($)

See also: Giant bugs, heat and a hospital visit: Inside Alligator Alcatraz’s first days (Miami Herald) ($)

See also: 5 things to know about GardaWorld, one of the contractors behind Alligator Alcatraz (Tampa Bay Times ($)

See also: Trucks Entering Alligator Alcatraz Are Hiding Their Logos, DOT Numbers (Miami New Times)

See also: Did a State Official Censor Anti-Alligator Alcatraz Billboards? (Miami New Times)

Perspectives

The memeification of cruelty (Popular Information)

NASCAR, Publix get tax breaks in Florida. You get higher tolls (Orlando Sentinel) ($)

DEP once again fails Florida springs, won’t push polluters (Florida Phoenix)

Lawmakers, stand up to DeSantis and start healing a mangled river (Orlando Sentinel) ($)

‘Right to Repair’ is vital for consumers and repair shops like mine (Tampa Bay Times) ($)