Gov. DeSantis promises feds will cover Alligator Alcatraz expenses, even as facility’s future is in doubt

Gov. Ron DeSantis is confident that the federal government will reimburse the state to cover the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars he spent to get Alligator Alcatraz up and running.

An official in his administration says the tent prison on the edge of the Everglades will soon have zero inmates. But DeSantis says the feds will still cover the costs, and that the mission will continue at other facilities.

“We spent money and we will get reimbursed. And getting illegals out, that saved you money because they are costly if they go to the medical care or all this other stuff. But we’re getting reimbursed for all that stuff. So Florida will clearly benefit from a taxpayer perspective. I don’t think there’s any question about that,” the Governor said in Orlando.

Critics have suggested the spend is significant, with independent journalist Jason Garcia noting that more than $350 million in contracts have been signed.

The vendor-managed project was projected to cost $245 per bed, or $450 million a year, and was scheduled to be reimbursed from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Initial expectations were that 5,000 people would be housed in those swampland tents with makeshift air conditioning and improvised plumbing, but by all accounts that optimistic assessment has been dashed.

DeSantis remains hopeful that a lower court ruling forcing the close of the facility will be overruled, as it has stopped the flow of migrants from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

“DHS hasn’t sent us anymore since that Judge ruled. But this week, we’re applying to have that decision stayed,” he said Tuesday.

The Governor rejected the Judge’s claim that Alligator Alcatraz created an undue environmental impact. “We don’t have to do a federal environmental impact statement when we’re doing business on our own property,” he said, even though that business was effectively federal business with the state serving as a pass-through subcontractor.

Other facilities will fill the void, including “Deportation Depot” in an unused prison in Baker County in Northeast Florida, and the similarly-alliterative “Panhandle Pokey,” according to the Governor.

Alligator Alcatraz, for better or worse, has become the issue that has increasingly defined the waning days of the DeSantis era, relegating previous controversies like Medicaid settlement money going to the Hope Florida Foundation to the back burner.

There have been positives, such as the opportunity to publicly demonstrate a truce with President Donald Trump.

And there have been surreal negatives, including the time when an irate protester interrupted the Governor as he waxed poetic in the wake of Hulk Hogan’s death, and the time when DeSantis acknowledged that some people may have been wrongfully deported.

However, what’s clear is that the controversy continues and so will the mission, even if the showcase facility’s future is in doubt.