The governor of Florida, Ron Desantis, proposed on Tuesday to build another immigration detention center in the northwest of the state called ‘Panhandle Pokey’ after the judicial ruling that ordered the dismantling ‘Aligator Alcatraz’ (Alcatraz de los Caimanes) no later than in October.
The state president justified in a press conference the future opening of the site, which refers to the region in Florida del Panhandle (pan mango) already ‘pokey’, a colloquial word in English to refer to prisons, estimating that there are 70,000 migrants in the state that already have a deportation order.
The new center, of which there are still no details, would be added to the so -called ‘Deportation Depot’ (deportation deposit), which Desantis announced in August that it would build in an abandoned jail in the north of the state with capacity for between 1,000 and 1,500 people.
“So we are in the process of finding out how we can open the ‘Panhandle Pokey’, and we will have that at Panhandle, and thus the mission continues,” said the Republican governor.
The announcement occurs two weeks after the order of Judge Kathleen Williams of the Southern District of Florida to dismantle within 60 days the site of ‘Aligator Alcatraz’ as part of a demand for environmental groups. The center opened on July 3 west of Miami and became a symbol of the immigration policy of President Donald Trump, who visited them two days before.
Desantis hoped that his appeal against the court order will prosper, although last week the Emergency Management Director of Florida, Kevin Guthrie, said that ‘Aligator Alcatraz’, in full wetland of the Everglades, “will soon have zero detainees.”
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“He is operating, deportations are continuing. There is a very partisan judge who issued a ruling by saying that the DHS (Department of National Security) could not send anyone else there, so they immediately appealed,” he said.
The governor argued that the immigration situation in Florida merits the creation of these centers.
“There is demand to have more than just ‘Aligator Alcatraz’. The reality is that, if the judge is order, even if we continue with these other centers, the DHS will not have enough space,” he said.
Florida and ‘Aligator Alcatraz’ have been emblematic of Trump’s immigration policy, whose administration has doubled the number of people in custody of the Immigration and Customs Control Service (ICE, in English) since he assumed in January, with 61,226 arrested in August.
With EFE information.
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