The state of Florida is in talks with the Trump administration to close the so-called “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration detention tent camp, The New York Times reported Thursday.
The immigration jail, which last summer became a symbol of the administration’s performative cruelty toward immigrants, has been plagued by accusations of horrific conditions, medical neglect, and abuse and violence directed at detainees. Republican officials gave the hastily constructed tent camp its nickname from the surrounding alligator-filled Everglades National Park, which the administration used to threaten detainees, and the former island prison off the coast of San Francisco that was infamously difficult to escape.
It also operates in a legal gray area, as it holds federal immigration detainees but is operated by contractors hired by the state of Florida. That has made oversight by state and federal lawmakers, as well as communication with detainees’ families and lawyers, more difficult, and has kept the facility wrapped in secrecy. It became a model for other state-federal partnership immigration jails around the country.
Talks to potentially close the facility are preliminary, the Times noted, citing conversations with an unnamed federal official, someone close to the administration of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and a former Immigration and Customs Enforcement official.
