Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem did not say which states were discussing these plans with her team.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on July 12 that five Republican-led states were discussing plans to build detention sites within their borders similar to Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz.”
Noem hosted a press conference in Tampa, Florida, on July 12 to discuss some of the illegal immigrants the Department of Homeland Security had recently arrested and deported via the Sunshine State. She took several questions on Florida’s new Alligator Alcatraz and praised the temporary detention facility.
“We’ve had several other states that are actually using Alligator Alcatraz as a model for how they can partner with us as well,” Noem said. “I’m having ongoing conversations with five other governors about facilities that they may have.”
Noem said she had not asked the governors whether she could share their names publicly. She said the plans to build similar facilities in other states were spurred by capacity limitations.
“We need to double our capacity in detention beds because we need to facilitate getting people out of this country as fast as possible and to sustain our operations,” Noem said.
Florida opened Alligator Alcatraz earlier this month in Ochopee, which is situated within the Everglades more than 50 miles west of downtown Miami. The facility, intended to be temporary, was constructed primarily with tents and metal fencing and can accommodate up to 3,000 prisoners.
Kevin Guthrie, the head of Florida’s emergency management, said the facility can withstand high-end Category 2 hurricane winds. Critics have raised concerns about the effects on the facility and its prisoners if a major hurricane were to hit the site, particularly after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted an “above normal” hurricane season this year, with at least three storms rated Category 3 or higher.
Noem said at the July 12 press conference that there are protocols in place to “sustain any hurricane” but did not say whether prisoners would need to be evacuated if a Category 3 or higher storm were to hit the area.
The homeland security secretary took several questions about Alligator Alcatraz and disputed some media reports that conditions at the detention facility have “deteriorated.”
“Alligator Alcatraz is held to the same standards that all federal facilities are. And in most states and in other jurisdictions, federal facilities are upheld to higher quality of standards than what some state and local jurisdictions have,” Noem said. “So any issues that were there have been addressed.”
Several Democratic lawmakers visited the site on July 12 after being previously blocked from arranging a tour, and they alleged that it is filled with bugs and has crowded and unsanitary conditions.
“There are really disturbing, vile conditions, and this place needs to be shut the [expletive] down,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) told reporters after visiting Alligator Alcatraz. “This place is a stunt, and they’re abusing human beings here.”
She claimed that the facility featured cage-style cells with 32 men sharing three combination toilet-sink units and that she measured 83-degree temperatures in an entranceway to the housing area and 85 degrees in a medical intake area.
Florida state Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, a Republican, however, said he found the facility to be clean and suggested that the air conditioning was working well.
“The rhetoric coming out of the Democrats does not match the reality,” he said after touring in the same group as Wasserman-Schultz.
Florida state Sen. Jay Collins, a Republican, also said there was “no squalor” at the facility, although he said the sanitation devices were basic.
“Would I want that toilet-and-sink combination at my bathroom at the house? Probably not, but this is a transitional holding facility,” Collins said.
Lawmakers were told not to bring any phones or cameras into the facility during the tour, and no journalists were allowed to join them.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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