State admits federal funding for Alligator Alcatraz may ’not materialize’

Florida Attorney General James Uthemeier acknowledged that the promised federal reimbursement of $608 million for immigration detention at facilities like Alligator Alcatraz in the Everglades may never come, according to a court filing on Tuesday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.

“The State took the risk (and still does) that federal funding will not materialize,” Uthmeier and the state’s contracted corporate attorneys wrote to the court.

“Promised funds are still only ‘likely, ’” the state wrote on behalf of Florida’s Department of Emergency Management. There has not been evidence filed in the case of “any legal, enforceable right the State had to the ‘promised’ funds,” the state wrote.

Their blunt acknowledgement that the more than half-billion-dollar price tag for the pop-up detention center could fall on Florida taxpayers is the latest in a long-running back-and-forth over why the state hasn’t been reimbursed yet, as state and federal officials initially said they would be.

Earlier this month, Emergency Management director Kevin Guthrie told lawmakers the Department of Justice was blocking the funding: “I don’t know why they’re holding that up,” Guthrie said. “But they said to stand by.”

In another filing Tuesday, lawyers from the Department of Justice argued that “the funding decision-making remains ongoing and is not yet ‘consummated’ — it is not final agency action,” as they had also said earlier this month.

The federal government lawyers also revealed in the filing the extensive limits on a potential reimbursement to the state, if it ever comes.

“As it likely will be structured, there will be no potential federal funding of the facility’s design, siting, maintenance, or construction, and no federal approval authority over whether the facility is built at all,” Department of Homeland Security’s lawyers wrote.

Tuesday’s filings by federal and state government lawyers requested the appellate court to reverse a district court decision in a case brought by the Friends of the Everglades and the Miccosukee tribe. The government lawyers said the lower court was wrong in interpreting the law when it ordered the controversial detention site be shut down, and requested that the decision be overturned.

In June, when the facility was hastily erected at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport airstrip, environmental groups sued the federal and state governments, arguing that they had bypassed federal law requiring an environmental impact assessment and that the first-of-its-kind facility was causing “irreparable harm” to the environment.

A district judge agreed with the environmental groups, ordering the site be shut down within 60 days and barring new detainees from being held at the Everglades facility.

Environmental groups have said the exchange of cash between the state and federal government was a trigger for federal environmental impact regulations.

The federal and state governments argue that such environmental harm is not real and that the lower court was overstepping its authority. The DeSantis administration has also maintained that the state is not subject to those federal regulations because it has not received any federal reimbursement — only promises.

The admission from the state’s attorneys that they may not get reimbursed comes as the Florida Legislature is debating whether to put stricter limits on Gov. Ron DeSantis’ use of an emergency fund he directs for immigration enforcement.

The agency has used the fund to commit at least $380 million through 83 contracts with private vendors. The largest contracts include $92 million to portable potty company Doodie Calls, $61 million to IRG Global Emergency Management and $52 million to Garner Environmental Services.

The governor’s office has also used that emergency fund to pay the corporate law firm Boies Schiller Flexner LLP $1.1 million — the firm that helped draft Tuesday’s filing acknowledging the state may be on the hook for the funds.

The federal government, however, left the door open in its filing Tuesday that it could reimburse the state for some of the millions it has spent on immigration detention, without tying it to Alligator Alcatraz.

“Although Florida may be the ‘only eligible applicant’ that does not mean this facility is the only eligible facility,” the government’s attorneys wrote.

This story was originally published February 25, 2026 at 2:59 PM.

Claire Heddles

Miami Herald

Claire Heddles is the Miami Herald’s senior political correspondent. She previously covered national politics and Congress from Washington, D.C at NOTUS. She’s also worked as a public radio reporter covering local government and education in East Tennessee and Jacksonville, Florida.