Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, spent $1.2m of taxpayers’ money per day to open and operate the notorious immigration jail known as 'Alligator Alcatraz', according to court records obtained by the investigative news site Florida Tributary.
The records also reveal that Florida may be left on the hook for at least $608m spent on the harsh Everglades detention facility after a shift in position by the Trump administration. James Uthmeier, DeSantis’s former chief of staff and Florida’s unelected attorney general, admitted last week that a federal reimbursement grant the governor had insisted was locked in might not be delivered.
The justice department indicated in a court filing that it had reviewed grant programme rules for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) and determined it could disallow some or all of the grant request made by the Florida department of emergency management that operates the jail. 'Crucially, the documents show that Fema may not reimburse Fdem for construction costs, and may ultimately disallow the requested costs altogether,' the filing said.
The funding wrangle is tied to a long-running lawsuit seeking to close the jail permanently. A Miami district judge ordered the facility shuttered in August, but a three-member appeals panel blocked that ruling in October, agreeing with defendants that because the jail was built with state funds, federal regulations did not apply.
Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades, said the facility 'was planned in secret, built in secret and operated in secret, concealing devastating impacts to Big Cypress National Preserve and the Everglades'. Critics also allege tens of millions of dollars in no-bid contracts were doled out to the governor’s political allies.
