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Officials weigh closing Florida’s 'Alligator Alcatraz' detention center

newsMay 7, 202641211

The Department of Homeland Security and Florida officials are weighing closure of the Everglades immigrant detention site nicknamed Alligator Alcatraz. Opened last summer, the center has cost Florida roughly $1 million per day and hundreds of millions of dollars overall while failing to meet DHS goals for effective detention and processing. Florida is in preliminary talks with the Trump administration to shut the facility, and migrant accounts and advocates describe cage-like, inhumane conditions that have increased legal and political pressure to close it.

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