Plans for a new immigration detention center in the Panhandle, dubbed the \u201cPanhandle Pokey\u201d by Gov. Ron DeSantis, are on hold, according to the Department of Homeland Security.<\/p>\n
Amid speculation that Florida\u2019s Alligator Alcatraz center will close soon, the department told the Tampa Bay Times in a statement that \u201cthis facility is no longer being proposed.\u201d<\/p>\n
In January, DeSantis said at a press conference at Deportation Depot that the \u201cPanhandle Pokey\u201d would be located in Northwest Florida, but he said he was waiting for approval from Homeland Security. DeSantis made the offer because U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not have enough detention space, he said.<\/p>\n
In September, DeSantis also mentioned during a press conference at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement\u2019s regional operations center in Orlando that he was talking with local officials in Panama City about building a center there.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re actually in the process of figuring out how we can set up a Panhandle Pokey, and we are going to have that in the Panhandle,\u201d DeSantis said. \u201cSo the mission continues.\u201d<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for DeSantis referred questions about the center to the Florida Division of Emergency Management, which did not immediately respond to an email Friday evening.<\/p>\n
This is a developing story. Check Tampabay.com for updates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Plans for a new immigration detention center in the Panhandle, dubbed the \u201cPanhandle Pokey\u201d by Gov. Ron DeSantis,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281545,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[6204,28,30,29,15897,119926,10066,842,119925,412,61106],"class_list":["post-281544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-department-of-homeland-security","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-homeland-security","tag-immigrant-detention-facility","tag-immigration-detention-center","tag-northwest-florida","tag-panhandle-pokey","tag-ron-desantis","tag-the-panhandle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281544","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=281544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}