Amid legal wrangling over a controversial immigrant-detention center in the Everglades, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday said the state plans to use a shuttered prison in North Florida to boost detention of people targeted for deportation.
The conversion of Baker Correctional Institution, which state corrections officials mothballed four years ago because of staffing shortages, into a second detention center in Florida will scrap a plan to house immigrant detainees at Camp Blanding west of Jacksonville, DeSantis indicated.
The cost to get the Baker County prison up-and-running will total around $6 million, compared to about $75 million to $100 million for a detention center at Camp Blanding, which is used as a training facility for the Florida National Guard, according to state Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie.
Guthrie said the federal government has pledged to give his agency $608 million to house 5,000 undocumented immigrants as part of the state’s support of President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation efforts.
A controversial immigrant-detention center in the Everglades, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” was estimated to cost roughly $450 million to construct and operate for a year. The detention complex, located adjacent to an airstrip known as the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, began housing detainees roughly six weeks ago after being quickly built.
Baker Correctional Institution — dubbed “Deportation Depot” by state officials — has proximity to an airport in Lake City that can accommodate planes larger than an airstrip at Camp Blanding, DeSantis told reporters during a news conference Thursday at the prison.
DeSantis said members of the National Guard and private contractors will staff the Baker facility.
“I know we had talked a lot about Camp Blanding, and I think it was a viable option, but this is just better, ready-made. This part of the facility is not being used right now for the state prisoners. It just gives us an ability to go in, stand it up, quickly, stand it up cheaply, and then, ultimately, have something that can be 1,300 (person capacity). It could be more than that,” DeSantis said, adding that “we won’t hesitate” to add more beds if needed.
Hector Diaz, managing partner of the Miami-based Your Immigration Attorney firm, said the converted prison “seems to be overkill,” as most of the people being detained “are not criminals and are being held for minor infractions and misdemeanors.”
“Putting these people in a former state prison correctional center is out of line,” Diaz said in an email.
DeSantis and other state officials “are making the immigration system more chaotic and are doing more harm than achieving their goal,” Diaz said.
DeSantis’ announcement about the prison came amid at least a temporary halt on additional construction at the Everglades site and as two federal-court fights continue.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams on Aug. 7 temporarily blocked state officials from additional construction or infrastructure, paving or installation of new lighting at the remote facility.
Williams’ ruling came in a lawsuit filed by Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity alleging state and federal officials failed to comply with a federal law that required an environmental impact study before construction began on the detention center, which is surrounded by the Big Cypress National Preserve. The Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida also joined the plaintiffs in the case.
Williams issued a 14-day temporary injunction blocking expansion at the facility and this week heard arguments on the plaintiffs’ request for a longer-lasting preliminary injunction seeking the impact study. Williams said she plans to rule on the request before the temporary injunction expires on Aug. 21.
State officials initially said the Everglades center would house up to 3,000 detainees and could be expanded to add 1,000 people. Guthrie said Thursday the center has a capacity for 2,000 detainees and holds 1,000.
Meanwhile, U.S. District Judge Rodolfo Ruiz on Thursday held a conference with attorneys in a separate lawsuit filed by immigration lawyers alleging that detainees at the South Florida detention center have inadequate access to legal assistance and immigration courts. The lawyers also allege that detainees are unable to meet privately with their attorneys.
In court documents, state officials said they have made strides in establishing a process for detainees to confer with their lawyers by video conference or in person and attributed the delay to the speed with which the Everglades complex was set up.
The immigration attorneys, however, maintain that the process remains inadequate, difficult to navigate and lacks privacy as required by law. As an example, a declaration filed Wednesday said that attorney Vilerka Solange Bilbao has struggled to obtain signed forms that would allow her to meet with clients. The lawyer eventually held a video conference with client Yuniel Michell Figueredo Corrales, a detainee who has been incarcerated at the Everglades facility since July 11. But the declaration said the online meeting was “clearly not confidential” because “Mr. Figueredo Corrales sat in a sort of tent with soft-sided, makeshift fabric walls and no roof” with “guards standing close by.”
Lawyers for state and federal officials are asking Ruiz to transfer the case, which was filed in the federal Southern District of Florida to the Middle District of Florida, which includes Collier County. The majority of the detention center is located in Collier County, but the airstrip is in Miami-Dade County, which is in the Southern District.
Ruiz on Thursday appeared to be grappling with the court venue issue, which he will consider during a hearing Monday before addressing the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction.
“There is a strong possibility that some counts that have been alleged cannot be brought in this district and should have been brought in the Middle District of Florida. There is also a possibility that some counts do indeed belong in the Southern District of Florida. These are some of the issues that I’m struggling with to determine whether or not I think we’ve met the threshold for injunctive relief,” Ruiz said.
Ruiz raised the possibility that the case could be split between the two judicial districts.
“Perhaps it’s a false hope from the court that everybody would say to themselves, judicial economy serves that a judge who spent this much time going through this record should hold on to this case,” Ruiz said. “As I’ve stated, there may be problems with keeping this whole case here, and they’re starting to really crystallize for me.”
–Dara Kam, News Service of Florida
Thomas Hutson says
Well now let’s just see what Baby Mussolini is doing with our FLORIDA TAXPAYERS DOLLARS! What was it he “Fronted” BIG DADDY TACO ORANGE MAN $450Million for his wet dream Alligator Alcatraz Prison! Now trying to impress BIG DADDY and ICE BY REOPENING closed prison because of guard shortages! Wow great spending of tax dollars just to impress for a possible job! Little Mussolini give it up it’s not going to work, Big Daddy is not impressed!
Laurel says
If the DOGE babies were worth their salt, they would have gotten rid of DeSantis and his absurd minions first thing.
What Else Is New says
Baby Mussolini wants a job in DC with Big Orange Daddy. Please take him, BOD!!
Ray W, says
This from a Law & Crime article:
On July 25, 2023, a Space Force sergeant who was based in Aurora, Colorado, responded to hearing his car’s alarm; he soon spotted two people dressed in black whom he said were trying to break into his Hyundai Elantra. According to the sergeant, he confronted them, at which time they fled in what he said was a “suspected stolen vehicle.”
Armed, the sergeant gave chase, shooting into the back of the fleeing car. In time, the fleeing car crashed, and the two occupants then fled on foot. Continuing to give chase, the sergeant shot at the pair, striking both in the back and killing one. The deceased was also struck in the head. He fired a total of 11 shots.
After the sergeant told police that he had been fired upon, a “forensic investigation found no evidence of any other weapons or guns. … ”
This June, a jury convicted the sergeant of second-degree murder and attempted murder. This past Friday, the sergeant was sentenced to serve 54 years in prison.
During sentencing, the prosecutor argued “[t]his was vigilante violence at its worst and now a young man is dead. … The defendant took the law into his own hands, chasing down a fleeing vehicle and opening fire on its occupants. …”
There is nothing in the story to indicate that the fleeing car had been stolen. That doesn’t mean that it wasn’t stolen, nor does it mean that it had been stolen.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
Once Florida’s Stand Your Ground statute was signed into law, I began telling clients that to advance one’s ground is not the same as standing one’s ground. To me, it seemed and still seems to be a simple and effective demarcation point, one that can easily be understood by the ordinary person.
Some 15 years ago I represented a young man who had become angered when he learned that his ex-girlfriend had arrived at his parents’ home with her brother to retrieve her belongings. His parents had invited her into their home to get her belongings. They liked her; he no longer did.
Awakened from his sleep, he had grabbed a large knife and run out of his house through the garage and then across the lawn onto his neighbor’s driveway where the two were already seated in a parked truck. He dented the hood and carved scratches on various parts of the truck.
Somehow, before he met with me for the first time, both he and his father had convinced themselves that advancing his ground out of his house and then across a grass divider and then onto the neighbor’s driveway was standing his ground.
After several unsuccessful months of trying, they both came into the office to hear a new plea offer. The interview room was across the hall from a young assistant public defender.
Before I entered the interview room, I warned the assistant to not become alarmed when yelling broke out. I told him that sometimes you have to piss people off to get them to listen. Within about a minute of my entering the interview room and telling them the plea offer, the father began yelling at me. I yelled back. Two or three or four minutes later, all three of us left the interview room with the father shaking my hand and telling me that I was the best lawyer.
After they left, the young assistant asked me how I had done that. I told him it takes time to learn lines and how to cross them, but he too would learn those lines. When you piss people off, you have to then know how to pull them back.
The plea offer? Felony reduced to misdemeanor assault, withhold of adjudication of guilt, and six months of probation with the option of early termination, plus costs and fees.
But it isn’t the fact that people can easily persuade themselves of things that are not true that is important. Dennis C. Rathsam, victim of this all too human weakness, repeatedly launders the same lies over and over again and presents himself to FlaglerLive readers as if his lie laundering makes him a virtuous commenter. Lie laundering is never a virtue.
The importance of the stories of the Colorado gunman and of the young Volusian is that certain people all too readily give themselves permission to harm others and then after the fact they look for any explanation that might help them, rational or not, true or not.
I have commented on a particular Florida murder case a number of times.
The owner of a cold-call steak business was driving down a road in a marked business truck with an employee. Looking for a potential sale, he spotted an elderly man doing yard work. He parked across the street and, wearing a company work shirt, walked toward the elderly man, who himself walked to his parked truck, to open the passenger-side door. Reaching into the glove box for a pistol, he then turned to the business owner and shot him. The victim fell to the ground. The elderly man, seeing the victim on his back with hands raised and hearing him ask “Why?”, stood over the victim and fired downward, killing the man. The employee witnessed the scene.
When the police arrived, the elderly man insisted to them that he had a right to kill the businessman because of a trespass onto his unfenced and unmarked yard.
Prior to trial, his attorney filed a Stand Your Ground motion, without success.
Before the jury, his attorney insisted on a Stand Your Ground trial defense, without success.
Perhaps, to his dying day in prison, the elderly man will adamantly insist to anyone who will listen that he had, all along, the lawful right to kill the businessman who wanted nothing more than to make a cold call sale of meat. All because the elderly man was one of those few or many among us capable of giving himself permission to kill others.
There is a reason I oppose the vengeful among us, the liars among us, the lie launderers among us.