Gov. DeSantis Announces "Deportation Depot" Immigration Detention Site

As a federal judge weighs whether to temporarily shut down Florida's controversial Alligator Alcatraz immigration detention site, the state appears to be preparing to open another facility in northeast Florida.

On Thursday morning, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced that a new immigration detention facility, called "Deportation Depot," will soon open in Baker County. The state plans to transform the Baker County Correctional Institution — a state prison that closed in 2021 amid staffing shortages — into the new facility, which will have the capacity to hold more than 1,300 detainees.

"We are calling this the Deportation Depot," DeSantis said. "This will be operational soon; it is not going to take forever, but we are also not rushing to do this right this day."

DeSantis explained that the rural prison, located between Tallahassee and Jacksonville, is being repurposed for immigration detention to provide "additional capacity beyond what we are doing in South Florida."

DeSantis' announcement comes a day after Donald Trump's "Border Czar" Tom Homan told reporters that he wasn't exactly fond of immigration detention center nicknames like Alligator Alcatraz and the recently announced Speedway Slammer in Indiana.

"I don't particularly like the names," Homan said. "I mean, the men and women in [the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)], what they're doing out there every day is dangerous, it's serious. They're doing it with dignity, honor, and respect, and I think sometimes those names take away from that."

It remains to be seen what Homan thinks of "Deportation Depot"

In early July, after President Donald Trump toured Alligator Alcatraz in the Everglades, DeSantis announced plans for another facility at Camp Blanding, a 73,000-acre military training site for the Florida National Guard in rural Clay County near Jacksonville.

But while the governor had previously considered the site as a possible location for another immigration detention facility, he said he ultimately chose Baker County Correctional Institution because "a massive part" of the facility is vacant and not being used for "any state correction activity."

DeSantis also noted that the facility is just down the road from Lake City Gateway Airport, which he suggested could be used for deportation flights.

"The reason of this is not to just house people indefinitely, we want to process, stage, and then return illegal aliens to their home country," DeSantis said. "That is the name of the game, and that's what we do in Florida."

As previously reported by USA TODAY Network-Florida, preparations recently appeared to be underway for a northern Florida facility.

Florida's Division of Emergency Management (FDEM), the state agency in charge of Alligator Alcatraz, appears to have already purchased a WeatherSTEM emergency response weather station and several lighting sirens for the facility, referred to in records as the "North Detention Facility," according to a $39,000 state contract. (WeatherSTEM is a Tallahassee-based weather technology company.)

Alligator Alcatraz, the state-run immigration detention facility in the middle of the swampy Everglades, opened in early July at an estimated cost of $450 million per year. FDEM quickly constructed the site, which officials have said will detain more than 3,000 people. The Trump administration has touted the facility as a place to hold the "worst of the worst" criminals before removing them from the country.

Since the facility's opening, much about its operations has remained unclear.

State officials have released little information about the detainees being held inside, and immigration attorneys, who've had limited access to their clients at the facility, have called it a "black hole." The state has quietly removed related contracts from public databases, and two federal judges in Miami recently asked the DeSantis and Trump administrations to clarify one basic question: Who is actually running this place?