Gov. Ron DeSantis was trying to spin the news that he might have to close Alligator Alcatraz, his fetid, jerry-built concentration camp in the Everglades.
“If we shut the lights out on it tomorrow,” he said, “we will be able to say it served its purpose.”
It’s fair to ask just what that was.
It has cost Florida at least $608 million, and probably close to $1 billion by now. The Trump administration said eight months ago that it would reimburse the state’s taxpayers for the $608 million, but hasn’t sent a dime. There’s no due date on the IOU.
It is probably one of the biggest wastes of money in Florida’s history — spending that could have protected seniors vulnerable to abuse or helped families about to lose Medicaid coverage. To hear DeSantis, the purpose was to help the feds cope with a temporary housing emergency created by Donald Trump’s wholescale immigrant detentions and deportations. But that was a choice on the governor’s part, not a necessity. Immigration has been exclusively a federal responsibility since the Supreme Court so ruled in 1876.