As reporting questions Alligator Alcatraz future, Gov. DeSantis says deportations continue

Ron DeSantis. Image via Rumble.

Florida’s Governor insists the state’s deportation mission continues apace, even as an email from Florida’s Director of Emergency Management (DEM) says Alligator Alcatraz will soon have zero inmates.

“They’re deporting them very quickly. And that’s a good thing. That’s what we want,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said while speaking in Orlando.

“We don’t determine who goes into the facility. Obviously, there’s litigation that’s been going on, that DHS (the Department of Homeland Security) is a party to, and so that may be an influence about where they’re sending people. But we’re ready to help, we want to continue to help. We have to continue with this mission. It’s important, and ultimately, it’s going to be good for the state of Florida.”

DEM Executive Director Kevin Guthrie emailed a South Florida rabbi, saying that he expected the inmate count to zero out within days, The Associated Press reported.

DeSantis said “ultimately, it’s DHS’ decision, where they want to process and stage detainees, and it’s their decision about when they want to bring them out.”

He also noted that Deportation Depot in Baker County has a capacity of 1,300 people, and that “there’s a demand, there’s a need for many, many more thousands here” even as the federal government is “removing them from those facilities and sending them back to their home country.”

But with Alligator Alcatraz under court order to wind down within 60 days, and facilities ramping up not just in Baker County but around the country, perhaps that need isn’t what it was when the South Florida airstrip was repurposed into a tent prison.