HOW FLORIDA IS HELPING THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ROUND UP ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS

The site was stood up with eight days’ notice in early July at the federal government’s request. It was meant to increase detention space, as existing Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities are already at maximum capacity with 50,000 beds nationwide.

Alligator Alcatraz has space to accommodate 2,000 people now and will be expanded to hold 4,000 people. 

DeSantis called Florida the White House’s top-performing state ally in targeting illegal immigrants and helping the federal government expand its ability to find and arrest people.

In the first six months of the Trump administration, Florida has strongly encouraged all state and county law enforcement to become deputized as federal immigration officers under the Immigration and Nationality Act’s 287(g) program, which has enabled state police to detain thousands of illegal immigrants at ordinary traffic stops and turn them over to federal authorities.

As the state has ramped up its own efforts, it has also worked to create detention space to supplement federal sites that were at capacity. In early July, DeSantis debuted Alligator Alcatraz with a visit from President Donald Trump and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to see where immigrants would be detained by the state, as well as a runway suitable for day and night operations from commercial-sized aircraft.

“One of the reasons why this was a sensible spot is because you have this runway that’s right here. You don’t have to drive them an hour to an airport,” DeSantis said on Friday.

Larry O’Keefe, executive director of the State Board of Immigration Enforcement, said on Friday that the state will ramp up its detention operation, making Alligator Alcatraz a preview of what was to come across the state.

“There will be a surge of arrests and what you see here at Alligator Alcatraz, and what’s to follow on detention capacity, will be here to meet that surge,” O’Keefe said. “We have more than doubled our capability and capacity to affect arrests.”

Just this week, the Trump administration has issued credentials to 1,200 Florida sheriff deputies and 650 Florida Department of Law Enforcement agents and local police to detain illegal immigrants and transport them to federal immigration authorities.

Florida has plans to set up a similar detention site at Camp Blanding in Starke.

The DHS has been limited in arresting, detaining, and deporting illegal immigrants until recently due to funding constraints that were rectified through Congress’s passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act earlier this summer. The bill funds 100,000 beds across the country.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, a Republican, proposed the Alligator Alcatraz project earlier in June and touted that the tent facility would not require much of a barrier surrounding the site because if immigrants were to escape, “there’s not much waiting for them, other than alligators and pythons.”

DeSantis took executive action in late June, greenlighting the effort to stand up the soft-sided facilities at the mostly unused airport strip. 

DeSantis said on Friday that the state is waiting for the federal government to approve its proposal to deputize select Florida National Guard members as federal immigration judges, which would increase the number of cases that the government can decide at a time when the Trump administration has fired immigration judges.