Q&A – How Many ICE Detentions Are Taking Place in Florida?
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Today’s entry: Brian, thank you for being our local voice of sanity. We frequently hear about Alligator Alcatraz and the number of detainees being housed there. What I haven’t seen reported is how many detentions are coming from Florida daily. Are, for example, the detainees in Alligator Alcatraz people detained in Florida? Also, what do you make of the $450 million Florida is said to be fronting to operate it? Thanks.
Bottom Line: Happy to assist with sanity, it’s much easier to do under this administration than the previous one. I’ll start with the second question first. No, the detainees at Alligator Alcatraz are not all illegal aliens detained within Florida although it does appear that most of them are. A couple of weeks ago a list of 700 illegal aliens housed at Alligator Alcatraz were released. Detainees from at least six other locations were among the names listed.
Standard operating procedure does result in detainees being sent to the closest detention facility that’s available, however you’ve likely heard that the Trump administration has faced a shortage of detention facilities as courts have significantly slowed deportations as ICE detentions have ramped up. That’s resulted in some detainees from other states being sent to Alligator Alcatraz as well – though exact numbers are unclear.
As for the estimated $450 million annually to operate Alligator Alcatraz...1) The federal government will pick up some if not all of the tab. 2) It pales in comparison to the cost of continuing to facilitate illegal immigration as we had been previously. I find it interesting that news media, in general, seemingly wasn’t and hasn’t been interested in covering the net cost of illegal immigration to Floridians, but as my analysis under the Biden administration showed, the annualized cost of maintaining status quo illegal immigration within our state was running approximately $3.7 billion annually, or at a cost of $468 per household within this state.
I find it interesting that others in news reporting didn’t find it worthwhile to report on the $3.7 billion in annual costs to keep illegal immigrants in our communities (let alone the additional crime, higher inflation, lack of affordable housing, etc.), but have found it important to reveal/discuss the estimated $450 million annually to remove them. You don’t have to be particularly good at math to know it’s a much better value proposition for the citizens of Florida to spend $450 million to dispose of a problem as opposed to $3.7 billion to facilitate it. As for the daily detentions...
The most recent data available is from June. What we know is that Florida has been second only to Texas in detentions, with ICE arrests rising by 219% within our state year-over-year, with an average of 64 ICE arrests within the state of Florida per day. Assuming that average has at least held through July, as appears likely to have been the case, there are at least 12,300 ICE arrests that have taken place within Florida since Inauguration Day.
While I understand that the question was specifically about ICE detentions, what’s potentially just as compelling, if not more so, is the potential for self-deportations across our state.
My recent analysis, based on jobs data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, revealed that self-deportations appear to be running at a rate of about 10-1, what actual removals have been. Using that national data, if self-deportations from within the state of Florida were running at roughly that rate – it's possible that over 120,000 illegal aliens within the state of Florida have left on their own since January 20th. As I’ve previously stated, one of the most effective aspects of the Trump administration's detention operation is marketing. Alligator Alcatraz serves that purpose as well. The bigger the deal news outlets want to make out of all of this, the more effective it is for the most efficient deportation operation of all, self-deportations.