DeSantis uses his emergency to build “Wannial Catraz”

TALHASSEE – Almost three years ago, when Hurricane Ian destroyed a bridge in southwestern Florida and left residents on a barrier island with poor access to drinking water and food, Gov. Ron DeSantis took contractors to use his emergency authority to rebuild the bridge. It took less than three days.

Now, Republican governors are swinging these same forces into different things to build immigration detention centers deep in the Everglades in a week.

Relying on an emergency order issued in January 2023 in response to floods of Cuba and Haiti immigrants arriving by boat on Florida Keys, Desantis is seizing county land, building facilities large enough to hold 3,000 detained immigrants, and building facilities large enough to deploy the Florida National Guard and protecting the site. The rush of immigrants’ arrivals ended long ago, but the order cited then-President Joe Biden’s “inadequate” response to immigration has been repeatedly extended.

“This isn’t our first rodeo,” DeSantis told Fox News on Friday, touring the Miami-Dade County-owned airfield, quickly becoming a small grid of sturdy tents and trailers.

“Detention of illegal aliens is a little different,” the governor admitted. “But logistics, we know how to do that.”

The speed at which the state is building detention camps — called Alligator Alcatraz, who nods to the gator-filled wetlands surrounding the site — both plagues local and state leaders who question whether the governor is stepping over his authority, as well as environmentalists and local elected leaders.

“Is the Florida emergency necessary to build this facility within this time frame?” Sen. Lori Berman, a Democrat from Boca Raton, said Friday. “We really don’t understand.”

The governor, she said, is following the letter of law regarding carrying out his emergency, but the question is whether there is a real emergency.

“Florida is building prison camps in the Everglades under the false cover of an emergency,” said Sen. Shevlyn Jones, a West Park Democrat.

“Turbo Speed”

The Crocodile Alcatraz idea first became publicly known on June 18th. That day, Florida Attorney General James Usmier, DeSantis appointee James Usmier appeared on Fox News to discuss plans for the new facility.

The news segment piqued the interest of former flight instructor and runway-savvy pilot Ra Schooley. Schooly, a Miami resident, has dumped a brief email to environmental leaders, including Eve samples from Everglades Friends.

“Look at something else…” he pointed out, sharing a link to the clip.

Two days later, Schooley saw an unusual notification from the Federal Aviation Administration to the airline. The small airport was scheduled to close for three days starting that night. In nearly 30 years, Schooley had never seen the strip closed, so he issued an alarm to other environmentalists.

“No one knew about it,” he said. “I thought they had to go through a community council or something.”

However, unlike typical state construction projects that can be maintained in a long procurement battle, the state was able to move at warp speeds for the Desantis emergency permit.

On the morning of June 21st, Schooley last flew through the area. The FAA for that day sent a notification: there will be no landings for the next 99 days. That same day, Usmeyer was in Washington, D.C., meeting with officials from the Department of Homeland Security and running a massive business to build the facility.

At the time, activists were organizing protests on property on Sunday, the same day that a core group of private contractors planned to hold meetings on the ground. By Monday, the federal government approved plans to build the project, and soon the truck had brought portable toilets, tents and industrial generators into the area, building up about 24 hours of construction.

The same day construction began, Collier County officials were learning the plan for the first time, according to an email obtained by the Miami Herald. Records show that Collier officials are unclear about key details, including whether they are due to continue responding to emergency calls to their addresses.

“We have our own on-site ambulance transport, complying with Florida and national model standards,” writes Kevin Guthrie, director of Florida’s Office of Emergency Management, as the agency leading the business. “I’ll have a federal inspection before I open it.”

Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniela Levine Cava was also notified by Guthrie that day. He said the property owned by the county is now under state control and will do so until “period of emergency” according to records obtained by the Herald.

Guthrie, who is also authorized to exercise the state’s emergency, said the state has begun construction of the site.

“Time is the essence,” he told Levine Kaba. “We must act promptly to ensure the preparation and continuity of our statewide business to support immigration enforcement.”

On Tuesday, Collier officials monitoring the land with Miami-Dade said, “What are your expectations for air medical trauma transport resources? Forward your plans for hurricanes, harsh weather, bad weather – harsh weather,” Collier’s director of emergency services Dan Summers wrote an email to the emergency.

If a hurricane occurs, the Department of Emergency Management told the Herald that detainees and staff will evacuate the site. The agency added that it is developing a disaster plan.

Set a precedent for Texas

Desantis’ actions are not unprecedented.

Earlier last year, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott used his emergency to take control of the local park in Eagle Pass border town.

The park sits from the Rio Grande, which divides Mexico and the United States. According to the city mayor, Abbott issued an emergency declaration to manage the park for use as a staging area. The city wanted to fight the acquisition, but it felt like it wasn’t the best financially profit.

Once seized by the state, Texas and Florida troopers patrolled the facility and were unable to enter anyone without permission, including US Border Patrol agents.

The Texas park acquisition came years after Abbott’s first published in 2021 ongoing disaster declarations surrounding the border. He renewed the order again this year, but has since said the Trump administration has helped reduce border crossings and is no longer necessary.

In Florida’s emergency order, the state says the Biden administration is the reason for the immigration crisis. He points out that the Trump administration is still in place and “there is a massive influx and number of illegal foreigners in the state,” and that a continuing order is necessary.

Since returning to the White House, President Donald Trump has revoked many of his Biden-era immigration policies. On June 17, the White House said that the US Border Patrol “didn’t release a single illegal thing to the United States” in May.

In an interview with Fox News last week about the detention center, Uthmeier cited the Pew Research Study, which found Florida’s undocumented population increased by 400,000, to 1.2 million between 2019 and 2022. The governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on why he believes the state is still in an immigration-led emergency.

In Florida, emergency orders expire every 60 days unless the governor chooses to renew them. The emergency order Desantis, issued prior to Hurricane Ian in September 2022, is still active today, and the emergency order Desantis issued when the Condo Tower in Surfside collapsed lasted nearly two years.

Florida’s Congress has the ability to either stop or limit the scope of Desantis’ emergency order by passing the solution, but it is unclear whether that has happened so far.

The wide use of Desantis’ emergency situations is because the US president is also leaning against emergency powers. Elena Chachko, a law professor at Berkeley Law School, said both Trump and Biden had adopted emergency powers in a broad and ambitious way.

As for the power of the president, Chachko said the courts are usually a check on the administrative department.

In Florida, courts are also fighting over executive orders. In 2021, a group of parents challenged Desantis’ executive order to suspend school mask orders. On Friday, environmental advocacy groups filed a lawsuit challenging the new detention centre for not undergoing procedural reviews.

Chris Reynolds, an emergency management expert at American Public University and dean of academic outreach and program development, has been called “unusual” an emergency for immigration in Dasantis.

“Two years seem like a terrible stretch,” he said.

Reynolds of Tampa said the emergency response law is intended to be broad to give leaders the flexibility to make quick decisions and keep people safe. But in this case, he said, some might see Desantis’ movement as being too far.

“In my opinion as an emergency manager, yes, I’m expanding the doctrine of emergency management in terms of strict emergency management response,” he said. “Is that against the law? No?”

There are no difficult and quick rules as to when a “emergency” against immigrants will expire without declaring, preparing, mitigating, responding, and recovering an explicitly declared disaster.

But Reynolds said he won’t see immigration detention camps divert resources from Florida when the next hurricane comes.

If anything, it is a “great” example of the kind of logistics and planning skills Florida is known for.