DeSantis’ mission-accomplished message on Alligator Alcatraz hides costly mistake | Opinion

Alligator Alcatraz ended the same way it began: with a massive spin job.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis held a press conference Thursday along with Border Czar Tom Homan to announce what had been rumored for a couple of months: the tent-and-trailer detention center the state built deep in the Everglades — an approximately $1.2 billion experiment in a hurricane zone using taxpayer dollars — is being dismantled.

In a fairer world, a shameful creation like this — one that was plagued by lawsuits and allegations of torture and wasted money — would have been demolished under cover of darkness. Instead, we had DeSantis holding a sweaty, dog-and-pony show out in the Everglades to tout how effective the detention center was at fulfilling its role in the Trump administration’s war on immigrants.

Yes, it was effective in some ways. Effective in spending enormous sums of money? Most definitely. Effective in kowtowing to President Trump? Sure. Effective in bypassing due process and disrupting environmentally sensitive lands? Yes again.

But if we’re talking about whether it was effective in corralling the “worst of the worst” among immigrants in the country illegally, there are legitimate and serious doubts about that. As the Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times reported, hundreds of immigrants were being held there who had no criminal record other than immigration violations. That’s a far different situation than what state and federal officials characterized a place where “vicious” and “deranged psychopaths” were sent before they were deported.

Americans may favor deporting criminals, according to polls, but they’re a lot less certain about arresting and detaining otherwise law-abiding immigrants.

No one wants serious criminals who come here illegally to be allowed to stay. But DeSantis and Homan spent a long time under the midday sun Thursday trying to make sure that’s the fear we were focused on, listing the many hardened criminals they deported among the 20,000 or so immigrants who went through the detention center in the year it was open.

Homan estimated 60-70% of those arrested nationally have criminal records or pending criminal charges. A Herald/Times investigation of Alligator Alcatraz detainees found something different: 250 out of one group of 700 had no criminal background.

“There’s no question this mission has made the state of Florida safer,” DeSantis said.

But this was a place that didn’t allow much scrutiny, and that rightfully raises questions. Lawyers had a hard time seeing their clients. The media was mostly kept out. Even lawmakers had a hard time getting in. Families and human rights groups claimed detainees were routinely mistreated. Phone calls were hard. Protestors held long-term vigils out by Tamiami Trail, the closest they could get.

If everything was aboveboard, why the secrecy? Maybe because beneath the military-style trappings, the tents and portable toilets, the detention center DeSantis built using our emergency funds was actually a really, really expensive way for him to ingratiate himself with Trump.

That’s how it was from the start, too. Alligator Alcatraz opened last July — though it feels like an eon ago — with DeSantis and Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier brimming with excitement. DeSantis bragged that the camp had been built in eight days. Uthmeier appeared on a video striding across the site: “Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide,” he intoned.

There was even a tour — one of the few times the media was allowed inside — before the camp opened. Trump, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and DeSantis held a walk-through, peering past chain link fencing and bunk beds. “It might be as good as the real Alcatraz,” Trump mused.

That’s all over now. The detention center is being demobilized, DeSantis said, noting the state still has a North Florida facility to house undocumented immigrants in Baker County dubbed Deportation Depot.

What will happen to the land is the next question. DeSantis used emergency powers to seize the land for the detention camp, but it belongs to Miami-Dade County. County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava wrote in a memo to the County Commission Thursday that she wants the site to be sold to the National Parks Service, which owns the adjacent Big Cypress Preserve.

That remains to be decided. For now, though, an ugly monument to Trump’s war on immigrants that was stuck right in Miami’s backyard will finally disappear. Maybe DeSantis will even be able to get it all done in eight days.