By Jim Turner, The News Service of Florida<\/p>\n
Responding to a\u00a0New York Times\u00a0report, Gov. Ron DeSantis acknowledged officials have discussed closing the detention center the state calls Alligator Alcatraz.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was always designed to be a temporary facility, and has made a major impact,\u201d DeSantis said while in Lakeland on Thursday. \u201cAnd if we shut the lights out on it tomorrow, we will be able to say it served its purpose, because it was responsible for helping with almost 22,000 illegal aliens. And that ultimately is what it\u2019s all about.\u201d<\/p>\n
DeSantis added that \u201cthey haven\u2019t said they want to wind it down. I mean, it\u2019s been discussed because I think you had a new secretary come in, take a fresh look at these things.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the\u00a0New York Times\u00a0story, which cites anonymous sources, Department of Homeland Security officials believe the center is too expensive.<\/p>\n
Florida, anticipating federal reimbursement, has spent at least $640 million on the facility that opened July 3, 2025.<\/p>\n
DeSantis, though, believes the effort has been worth it to house and later transfer undocumented immigrants out of Florida.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we didn\u2019t have that facility, DHS did not have room to put them anywhere. They would have been released back to the public,\u201d DeSantis said of those taken to the facility and another in north Florida called Deportation Depot. \u201cI have no doubt that that has saved lives, and ultimately, it does save taxpayer money because you have all the services that go in to having to pay when people are here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Jim Turner, The News Service of Florida Responding to a\u00a0New York Times\u00a0report, Gov. Ron DeSantis acknowledged officials…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":175772,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":["post-266128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}