Eighth Amendment to the Constitution: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”
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As a resident of Florida, I shouldn’t be happy when I see my state being cheated out to $600 million, but I’ll make an exception in this case. Perhaps it has to cost Florida’s taxpayers $600 million to realize what a mess the Republicans and Governor Ron DeSantis have made of this state.
Ron is a small man, and I don’t mean just in stature—I’m talking about his character. He is small-man cruel, which seems to be a MAGA prerequisite. When problems arise, DeSantis almost always opts for a “final solution” that hurts the most people, most, especially the poor and powerless.
Being a bully, he lacks courage, compassion and any sense of decency. He tries to out-Trump at being nasty and crooked, while lacking any compassion.
He built a Nazi-style concentration camp for immigrants, placed it in the middle of a swamp, and jovially called it “Alligator Alcatraz,” to stress the cruelty he inflicted on helpless people.
To quote from the following article from the May 8th Sun-Sentinel:
James Uthmeier, a Republican and DeSantis’ former chief of staff, had pushed to build the center at an old training airport, despite the lack of existing infrastructure.
Both men argued that it was crucial for the center to be in a remote location, saying that the inhospitable conditions would prompt immigrants to think twice about staying in the United States illegally and risking arrest.
Other states later opened immigrant detention centers of their own, though the one in the Everglades stood out as particularly unforgiving given that the site essentially consisted of tents.
In America, even convicted child rapists and murderers aren’t subjected to such cruel and inhumane conditions.
Yet the immigrants held in the horrifying environment at Alligator Alcatraz haven’t been convicted of anything—they’re simply people seeking better lives, like the rest of the immigrants who built America.
In DeSantis’s twisted view, these poor, powerless souls should be tortured before being deported –his way of “Making America Great Again.”
It’s hard to imagine what happened to him as a child that now could spark such hatred. Were his parents unusually cruel? Was he bullied by the other kids?
No normal human would create a place like that, yet there it is, right in the middle of Florida’s swamp.
Here is the article in its entirety:
Feds, state may shut Alligator Alcatraz
Homeland Security says detention center too expensive to keep open; Florida has not been repaid $608M in costs
By Patricia Mazzei and Hamed Aleaziz, The New York Times
Florida is in talks with the Trump administration to shut down a high-profile immigration detention center that opened last summer in the Everglades and has cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars to operate, according to a federal official, a former Immigration and Customs Enforcement official, and a person close to the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The shutdown talks are preliminary, the people said. But officials at the Department of Homeland Security have concluded that it is too expensive to keep operating the center, known as Alligator Alcatraz.
Homeland Security officials have also come to consider the center ineffective, the federal official said. All three people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal talks.
The DeSantis administration has been spending more than $1 million a day to run the center, which is in a swampy, isolated area between Miami and Naples. Some private vendors hired by the state to operate it have been struggling to front costs, according to the person close to the DeSantis administration.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did the Florida Division of Emergency Management, which operates the center, nor DeSantis’ office.
When politicians won’t answer questions, you can be sure they have much to hide.
DeSantis, a Republican, has repeatedly called the Everglades detention center a success, saying it has helped the Trump administration by providing more beds to house federal detainees. He has also said that the facility was intended to be temporary.
A success at what? Torturing people or spending money? And if it was such a success, and costs so much, why is it temporary?
But the center’s shutdown would be hailed by immigration lawyers, activists and many detainees and their families as a huge win. Critics have denounced what they describe as unsanitary and inhumane conditions at the center since it opened 10 months ago; state officials have consistently dismissed such descriptions as false.
As of last month, the center held nearly 1,400 detainees, all of them men, according to ICE data. The agency classified about two-thirds of the detainees in the center, which it calls the Florida Soft-Sided Facility South, as noncriminal.
Just think about it—two-thirds of the people in that monstrous insult to decency aren’t even criminals. And wasn’t this intentionally awful garbage dump supposed to be reserved for “the worst of the worst”?
DeSantis has said from the start that the federal government would pay back the state for operating the center. But Florida has yet to receive the $608 million federal reimbursement it requested to run the center for about a year. The money was held up in part by the partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security that ended last Thursday. It is unclear why the reimbursement continues to be delayed.
DeSantis believed Trump. When one miserable liar believes another miserable liar, taxpayers foot the bill.
The center became the nation’s first state-run facility to hold federal immigration detainees last July, as Florida pushed the boundaries of aggressive enforcement under President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. Its remote location and brazen name gained it international notoriety before any detainees arrived.
At the time, Trump and Kristi Noem, then the homeland security secretary, toured the center with DeSantis and Florida’s attorney general, James Uthmeier. Uthmeier, a Republican and DeSantis’ former chief of staff, had pushed to build the center at an old training airport, despite the lack of existing infrastructure.
Other states later opened immigrant detention centers of their own, though the one in the Everglades stood out as particularly unforgiving given that the site essentially consisted of tents.
Non-criminals were forced to live in tents in the middle of a swamp. That’s cruel by intent, and it sure is unusual. But hey, who cares about the Constitution?
Uthmeier, a Republican and DeSantis’ former chief of staff, argued that it was crucial for the center to be in a remote location, saying that the inhospitable conditions would prompt immigrants to think twice about staying in the United States illegally and risking arrest.
That’s the excuse for torture? That’s the excuse for inhumanity? Weren’t any whips, bone-crushers and fingernail pullers available?
But the location made it much more expensive to build and run. Vendors had to truck in things like tents, power generators and trailers for staff members to live in. They also had to constantly truck out sewage and other waste.
A lawyer for two detainees said in a federal court filing last month that guards beat and pepper-sprayed the men after detainees protested that their access to a phone inside the center had been cut off.
How dare those people demand their legal rights in America. Don’t they realize they’re in Florida?
As part of the sworn declaration, the lawyer submitted a photo of one of the detainees with a black eye. Also last month, a federal appeals court upheld an earlier decision to block a lower court’s order that the center dismantle operations because it had not conducted an environmental review required under federal law.
It was ordered dismantled, not because it was violating the Constitution and torturing people, but because it was violating the environment. Oh well, whatever will get the job done . . .
A panel from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the center was not under federal control, and thus was not subject to the environmental review.
It’s under state review, and DeSantis doesn’t care about two things: The environment and human decency.
A landing strip allows flights to arrive at and take off from the Everglades center, though itis unclear how frequently detainees have been moved in or out. At least some of the center’s detainees have been flown to larger federal detention centers in Louisiana and Texas, often as a final stop before they are deported.
Fly them here; fly them there. Since the Republican administration has no idea what it’s doing, the cost of uselessly flying people hither and yon is just a drop in the bucket of wasteful activities paid for by taxpayers.
And the people keep voting for the criminals who are on the outside of Alligator Alcatraz. MAGAs, is this your example of what makes America great?
This article originally appeared in The New York Times
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
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