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Florida opened a second migrant detention facility called “Deportation Depot,” which is now accepting detainees, the office of Gov. Ron DeSantis told Fox News on Friday.
The detention facility is inside the former Baker Correctional Institution located in Sanderson, in the northern part of the state.
The first detainees arrived on Tuesday, Sept. 2. As of Friday, 117 people are being held there. The facility has the capacity to house up to 1,500 detainees.
“The Baker County facility will now be a great supplement to Alligator Alcatraz. We’ll use as many of the detention spaces as we can,” Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier told Fox News. “We want to fill them up. We want deliver on this mission. The Baker County site was actually a pre-existing state jail that was no longer in use. So it’s already retrofitted out to hold a lot of people. We’ll fill it up quickly and we’ll put it to good use.”
OPERATIONS AT ‘ALLIGATOR ALCATRAZ’ BACK ON AFTER APPEALS COURT HALTS JUDGE’S ORDER
The unveiling comes a day after a federal appeals court halted a lower court judge’s order to end operations indefinitely at the “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration detention center built in the Florida Everglades.
The panel voted 2-1 to stay the judge’s order pending the outcome of an appeal, allowing the facility to continue holding migrant detainees – for now.
Last month, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams issued a preliminary injunction blocking Florida from further expanding that detention center and ordering operations to dwindle by the end of October. The judge also ordered the state to transfer detainees to other facilities and to remove equipment and fencing.
DHS HAS BEGUN FLYING MIGRANTS OUT OF FLORIDA’S ‘ALLIGATOR ALCATRAZ,’ DESANTIS ANNOUNCES
The rulings came after a lawsuit brought by Friends of the Everglades, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Miccosukee Tribe accused the state and federal officials of not following federal law requiring an environmental review for the detention center, which the groups argue threatens sensitive wetlands that have protected plants and animals.
President Donald Trump toured the facility in July and suggested it could be used as a model for future facilities across the country to support his mass deportation plan.
Reacting to Thursday’s ruling, DeSantis said that claims that the facility would soon shutter were false.
“We said we would fight that. We said the mission would continue. So Alligator Alcatraz is in fact, like we’ve always said, open for business,” he said on social media.
Uthmeier told Fox News he is not expecting any legal resistance to the “Deportation Depot” site.
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