Alligator Alcatraz, the massive immigration detention center in Florida, was originally expected to cost taxpayers $450 million per year. Leaked documents show that, after being in operation for less than two weeks, the cost of the facility has ballooned to over $600 million.
The 30-square-mile facility located in the Florida Everglades west of Miami—complete with a functional airstrip—was selected to house, process, and potentially directly deport up to 5,000 detainees. First announced in a video posted on X by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier on June 19, the project was touted as an “efficient” and “low-cost opportunity to build a temporary detention facility” by using tents and the natural perimeter, presumably full of alligators and pythons. Despite opposition from the Miami-Dade County mayor, construction began at the site on June 28. After an opening day tour by President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem on July 2, the facility began accepting detainees.
To help cover the facility’s estimated costs, Noem announced on June 24 that her agency would partially reimburse Florida for the project, funded “in large part” by a $625 million fund set aside by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Shelter and Services Program (SSP).
However, new information from a leaked internal FEMA document reviewed by Drop Site puts “the total grant awarded to the Florida Division of Emergency Management at $608.4 million.” Drop Site‘s source within FEMA also explained that Noem intends to change the type of projects that receive money under the SSP: “It appears they’re taking the money intended for the SSP that Congress mandated via their old appropriations bill to a new grant program related to [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] so they can pay states” to develop immigration detention centers. FEMA has not yet responded to Drop Site’s request for comment.
FEMA’s SSP was created in 2019 to reimburse state and local governments and nonprofits for providing temporary housing, food, and emergency medical care for new migrant arrivals released by the DHS while awaiting immigration court hearings. According to the SSP website, which has since been taken down, Congress appropriated $650 million in FY 2024 to the program to provide “financial support to non-federal entities to provide sheltering and related activities to noncitizen migrants following their release” from the DHS and to “support [Customs and Border Patrol] in the safe, orderly, and humane release of noncitizen migrants from short-term holding facilities.”
Congress declined to fund the program in FY 2025. Drop Site reports, “SSP has only $83.5 million unallocated funds remaining through September 30.” The rest of the funds may come from the Department of Government Efficiency deobligating funds sent to grantees and rerouting the money from immigrant shelters to detention centers, “which would likely require the cooperation” of the Treasury Department.
Since Inauguration Day, Trump has pushed the administration to find ways to house more migrant detainees to aid in his mass deportation plans—and Alligator Alcatraz’s additional 5,000 beds is just the tip of the iceberg. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Trump signed into law on Friday, increases Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s budget by 265 percent and appropriates $45 billion to mass detention efforts alone. It’s still unclear what the final cost of Alligator Alcatraz will be, but one thing is certain: the Trump administration is willing to spare no expense to implement its stringent immigration policies.
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