Florida in Secret Talks With Trump on Closing “Alligator Alcatraz”

Now the facility that was framed as a huge success by President Trump and Governor DeSantis may collapse in failure.Homeland Security officials have also deemed the facility too costly to keep running, according to a federal official who spoke with the Times, although no official decisions to close it have been made.Part of this failure can be attributed to Trump leaving DeSantis without any federal funding for the facility’s construction. While the federal government promised to reimburse Florida for hosting the detention center, no payments have yet been made. The swampy location, cruelly touted by Trump as a buffer for detained immigrants, also made it harder for workers to get supplies, sewage—and themselves— to and from the center. And while there has been no official announcement, the closure of Alligator Alcatraz would be an embarrassing development symbolic of the changing public opinion of Trump’s widely unpopular immigration crackdown. The Department of Homeland Security and DeSantis’s office have yet to comment on the report.