DeSantis boasts of deporting 21,000 as notorious Alligator Alcatraz jail closes

Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, boasted on Thursday of deporting 21,000 people from Alligator Alcatraz, as he confirmed the closure of the notorious immigration jail hastily erected in the Everglades that became a byword for cruelty and human rights abuses and environmental damage. Standing beside Tom Homan, Donald Trump’s so-called border czar, at a press conference at the now dismantled site in Ochopee in the environmentally sensitive region in south Florida , DeSantis presented its year-long operation as a victory for the president’s aggressive immigration enforcement agenda. “Alligator Alcatraz fulfilled the role it was designed to serve,” he said, adding that all of the detainees held there until last week had been transferred into federal immigration custody elsewhere. “When you start talking about 21,000 folks, that without question has made our state safer, and it’s made the country safer as well,” DeSantis added. Critics, however, said the jail run by the Florida state, on which the governor was reportedly spending $1.2m a day of Florida taxpayers’ money, was a political liability for DeSantis. There was a groundswell that publicity over the multiplying reports of “inhumane” treatment of undocumented detainees, including physical abuse and isolation from legal representation, was becoming untenable. …