One thing is quickly becoming clear about “Alligator Alcatraz,” the immigrant detention camp that the state of Florida just opened in the middle of the Everglades:
The politicians running the place are bigger lawbreakers than many of the immigrants they’re locking up.
🧵...
The DeSantis administration, for instance, is staffing the facility with private correctional officers who haven’t had to submit to fingerprinting, pass a physical exam, or pass background checks...
It has also suspended truck-safety laws and portable toilet permitting rules...
The governor has even given himself and his aides freedom to hand out no-bid contracts, pay overtime to senior managers, and buy boats, planes and cars...
Suspending those procurement laws has helped the DeSantis administration rapidly issue more than $150 million worth of contracts and purchase orders connected to the detention camp at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport (aka TNT)...
Altogether, DeSantis has suspended more than half a dozen state laws and rules using powers he gave himself when he declared a statewide state of emergency over immigration in January 2023 — a declaration initially only supposed to last for 2 months but is now in its 3rd year...
DeSantis also used those expansive emergency powers to seize the land itself – commandeering the TNT airport from its owner, Miami-Dade County, after his administration made a lowball offer to buy the site that county leaders rejected...
And where the DeSantis administration hasn’t suspended laws, he has simply chosen to flout them...
Like when a group of Democratic lawmakers showed up to inspect the camp, citing state laws that permit members of the Florida Legislature to visit detention facilities “at their pleasure.” DeSantis administration officials denied them entry without citing any legal basis to do...
Then there’s the state law — a law DeSantis himself signed — that requires Florida’s Auditor General to audit all expenditures and contracts entered into any state of emergency that extends beyond one year.
But the Orlando Sentinel’s Jeff Schweers revealed last week that not a single such audit has ever been done during the two-and-a-half years that DeSantis has kept Florida in a state of emergency over immigration...
orlandosentinel.com/2025/07/11/flo…
The DeSantis administration has even been pushed the Trump administration to suspend federal detention center standards — so immigrants can be put camps like Florida’s, where detainees have reported worms in the food, feces on the floor, and delays in accessing medication...
More here:
jasongarcia.substack.com/p/alligator-al…
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.