By admin 
A new report by a congressional accountability watchdog found the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement squandered taxpayer dollars on “unsuccessful detention initiatives,” including the Everglades detention center known as Alligator Alcatraz. The report revealed that the DeSantis administration operated the facility without proper authorization from federal immigration officials, resulting in per-detainee costs nearly three times higher than standard ICE facilities.
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The U.S. Government Accountability Office report said that ICE officials neither instructed Florida to open the facility in the middle of the Everglades nor entered into an “agreement or contract authorizing its operation as a federal immigration detention facility.”
Federal immigration officials told the congressional accountability agency that existing 287(g) agreements with Miami-Dade County permitted their use of the detention facility. Such agreements enable local governments and law enforcement agencies to conduct immigration-enforcement activities, including detention. However, the legislative watchdog said it found no reference to the detention center in the documents.
“ICE officials cited the existing 287(g) agreement with Miami-Dade County as the legal basis for obtaining detention space at the Florida Soft-Sided Facility. However, these agreements do not reference the facility or otherwise indicate that ICE approved the state of Florida to use it as an immigration detention facility,’ the report stated.
Investigators also found that “without a contract or agreement in place before opening the facility,” the detention center had “the potential to result in waste” because of its high operating costs.
Alligator Alcatraz, officially known as the Florida Soft-Sided Facility, was closed in June after the DeSantis administration promised almost $1 billion in no-bid contracts to private contractors to run the detention center, which was overseen by the Florida Division of Emergency Management.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency awarded the Sunshine State the full $608 million of its Detention Support Grant Program, which was established to help states build and expand the federal government’s immigration-detention capacity.
FEMA developed the grant by repurposing funds appropriated under the Biden administration for shelter services to relieve overcrowding at U.S. Customs and Border Protection holding facilities.
So far, Florida has received approximately $84 million of the promised amount.
The report noted that although ICE typically negotiates detention facility costs prior to entering into agreements, it failed to do so in this instance. Additionally, ICE bypassed its standard process for entering into intergovernmental contracts with states. By omitting these cost negotiations, the agency ultimately increased its overall expenses.
“The Detention Support Grant Program authorizes a bed rate — the dollar amount required to house one adult detained noncitizen for one day — of $249 for the Florida Soft-Sided Facility, approximately 171 percent higher than ICE’s median bed rate of $92 in fiscal year 2026,” the report said.
The congressional watchdog said its audit included a site visit to Alligator Alcatraz and noted that the same issue with high costs persists at Baker Correctional Institution, the still-operational state-run detention center in Sanderson dubbed the Deportation Depot.
Investigators recommended that the Department of Homeland Security be more strategic in expanding its detention facilities, which the federal agency agreed to do.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said in a statement Tuesday that “under President Trump’s leadership, DHS has saved U.S. taxpayers more than $13.2 billion, without cuts to key law enforcement, border security, national security, immigration enforcement, or other public safety positions.
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“From day one, DHS has remained singularly focused on removing the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens from the United States and is always evaluating the best methods to do so,” the spokesperson said. “These heinous criminals, once arrested, should be removed at lightning speed, not housed on American soil at the taxpayer’s expense. DHS is moving swiftly to utilize EXISTING detention space with our state and county partners.”
The Florida Division of Emergency Management did not respond to a request for comment.
The congressional agency report follows a DHS Office of Inspector General report that found that the conditions in which immigrants were detained in cages at the Alligator Alcatraz failed to meet several state and federal standards. The report found that detainees were held in small metal cages, not provided appropriate living quarters and lacked access to clean water.
The state and federal governments have maintained that the detention facility met federal standards.
“When [Alligator Alcatraz] was set up, they did all this stuff to exceed the federal guidelines that, quite frankly, I thought was excessive, but they were worried that they were going to be accused of mistreating people that came through there,” Gov. Ron DeSantis told reporters at a press conference last week when asked about the DHS watchdog report. “And I told them, I’m like, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, you are gonna be accused of that no matter what you do.’ You could have created the Taj Mahal and they still would have, they would still do that.”
The Everglades detention facility, which DeSantis claimed fulfilled its purpose upon its closure, was the brainchild of his former chief of staff, James Uthmeier, whom he appointed attorney general last year.
Last summer, Uthmeier dreamed up the idea of transforming parts of the airstrip of the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport into an immigration detention center to aid in President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
In late June 2025, white industrial tents, generators, and heavy equipment were deployed within just eight days to transform the airport into a detention facility.
Within a month of its opening, the detention center was plagued with multiple lawsuits. Environmental groups accused the state and federal governments of skirting federal regulations requiring an environmental assessment before such federal projects.
The federal and state governments, citing 287(g) agreements, argued that the facility was state-run and did not need to meet such standards. The case is still going through the courts.
In another lawsuit, detainees who were being held there argued that their First Amendment rights were being violated. The lawsuit was eventually dismissed as “moot” after the detention center closed.
This story was originally published September 29, 2026 at 12:03 PM with the headline “ICE wasted taxpayer money on Alligator Alcatraz with no contract, report finds.”
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