Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” a model for state-run immigrant detention facilities, saying the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is hoping to create other similar sites.
“The locations we’re looking at are right by airport runways that will help give us an efficiency that we’ve never had before,” Noem told CBS News.
Alligator Alcatraz, built near the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport in a 30 square mile area otherwise surrounded by the Everglades, has come under fire for poor conditions.
Built in just a matter of days, the facility uses soft-side tents with chain-link fences to create cells that separate units of bunks.
Detainees have complained of maggot-filled food, flooding floors, insects everywhere, and poorly functioning air conditioning
GOP voices have boasted of the difficulty of the terrain, with scorching temperatures and swampland that is home to alligators and snakes.
Noem told CBS that similar sites are under consideration in Arizona, Nebraska and Louisiana.
While the DHS is flush with funds from the “big, beautiful bill” to build new detention centers that can double detention capacity to as high as 100,000, Noem framed the matter as a cost-saving effort.
The facilities are cheaper than those available through private contractors and the hope is to have migrants in the facilities — and quickly deported — within days, “facilitating quick turnarounds.”
“They’re all strategically designed to make sure that people are in beds for less days,” Noem said.
“It can be much more efficient once they get their hearings, due process, paperwork.”
The contracts are currently just for one year but are able to be extended for up to five.
But the secretary questioned the longer-term deals that have been signed with private contractors in the past.
“For me personally, the question that I’ve asked of every one of these contracts is, why are we signing 15-year deals?” Noem said.
“I have to look at our mission. If we’re still building out and processing 100,000 detention beds 15 years from now, then we didn’t do our job.”
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