The Trump administration is finally going to spend a decent chunk of Federal Emergency Management Agency funds—but it’s going to be used to build an immigration detention center in Florida. And Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier could not be more hyped.
On Monday, Noem said that FEMA will fund “in large part” the construction of what Uthmeier is calling “Alligator Alcatraz” in a remote part of the Everglades. It will be surrounded by alligators and pythons, making one of President Donald Trump’s first-term fantasies come true. Trump also really wants to reopen the actual Alcatraz in San Francisco, but he might have to settle for this low-rent version for now.
Part of Noem’s invented justification for this is the MAGA conspiracy theory that President Joe Biden spent hundreds of millions of FEMA funding to house Tren de Aragua gang members in luxury New York hotels. In reality, Congress created and funded FEMA’s Shelter and Services Program for state and local governments, which must be used “for noncitizen migrants following their release from DHS.” The money is supposed to be used to provide immigrants with shelter, food, transportation, and medical care during their immigration proceedings.
In Noem’s world, a prison in the middle of the Everglades totally fits the bill. The detention center will be on the site of the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, which is part of Miami-Dade County where officials raised several concerns about this, including the environmental impact on the delicate Everglades ecosystem and its cost. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis solved this by using his emergency powers to seize the land from the county.
The facility is expected to cost the state $450 million per year to run and house roughly 1,000 immigrants. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin already made sure to let Florida know they can ask for reimbursement from FEMA for those costs, too.
While the worst people in the world are pumped with federal aid to build a brutal prison, everyone else is wondering what exactly FEMA is planning to do during hurricane season.
To be fair, David Richardson, FEMA’s acting administrator, didn’t seem to know that the United States even had a hurricane season and has no background whatsoever in disaster management, so it’s not like he knows what he’s doing.
The Trump administration has made crystal clear that it’s not interested in allocating FEMA funds to help states recover from natural disasters. The agency already refused a request for disaster aid from Arkansas after tornadoes hammered the state in March. It also killed a program in Louisiana that raised levees and elevated homes to better withstand hurricanes and floods. And when North Carolina asked FEMA to continue matching funds spent by the state as it recovers from Hurricane Helene, the agency told the state to pound sand.
Meanwhile, Trump’s still talking about downsizing or altogether eliminating FEMA, saying it will be “phased out” after hurricane season, forcing states to cover their own disaster relief costs.
But now it looks like FEMA will stick around as a piggy bank for Noem to build prisons for immigrants. Never mind that Noem’s spendthrift ways have blown a $1 billion hole in ICE’s budget—funding for Trump’s immigration crackdown is bottomless.