MIAMI — Florida intends to shut down a high-profile immigration detention center that it opened last summer in the Everglades, according to a federal official and three people familiar with the facility’s operations.
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Officials at the center, known as Alligator Alcatraz, told vendors there Tuesday afternoon that it was closing, the people familiar with the facility’s operations said.
Vendors were told that detainees would be moved from the facility by the start of June and that the center would be broken down over the following weeks, the three people said. The three people and the federal official all requested anonymity to discuss the closure, which has not yet been made public.
It is unclear where the detainees would go; the federal government runs many other detention centers, including in Florida. The Everglades center, which is run by the state, held about 1,400 detainees as of last month, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement data.
The announcement came days after The New York Times reported that Florida was in talks with the Trump administration to shut down the center, which has cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars to operate since it opened last July. Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, confirmed after the article’s publication that federal and state officials had discussed closing the center.
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The Florida Division of Emergency Management, which operates the center, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. Neither did DeSantis’ office. The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that the agency “continuously evaluates detention needs and requirements to ensure they meet the latest operational requirements.”
DHS officials have concluded that the Everglades center is ineffective and too expensive to run. The DeSantis administration has been spending more than $1 million a day to run the center. Florida has yet to receive the $608 million federal reimbursement it requested to run the center for about a year.
Some private vendors the state hired to help operate the center have been struggling to front costs. One vendor, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal from the state, said in an interview last week that the state had not paid some invoices in more than 200 days.
DeSantis said in a news conference in Miami last week that he was unaware of any delays in vendor payments and directed questions to the state’s emergency management division.
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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.