Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis gave “Fox and Friends” co-host Steve Doocy a tour of “Alligator Alcatraz” Friday.
The Trump administration on Tuesday approved the construction of the facility to house and process illegal immigrants for deportation following a suggestion by Republican Attorney General James Uthmeier of Florida. DeSantis told Doocy that the new facility for the Department of Homeland Security was “as secure as it gets.”
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“When you want to have deportation of illegal aliens, there is a process that DHS has to go through to vet, to process and to stage them for removal and you know, we’ve got jails and our sheriffs and police are working, the state of Florida is all in on President Trump’s mission,” DeSantis told Doocy. “Obviously, you have ICE operations but that is not enough and so there needs to be more ability to intake process and deport and so this answers that. This is going to be able to have more than 3,000 illegals can be processed through here, we’ve got a massive runway behind us, where any federal assets they want to fly these people back to their own country, they can do it, one-stop shop.”
President Donald Trump issued several executive orders to address illegal immigration and border security, including designating Mexican drug cartels, the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua (TdA) and the El Salvadoran prison gang MS-13 as foreign terrorist organizations upon taking office Jan. 20. DeSantis explained the rapid progress on the facility, which impressed Doocy.
“This is being done by the Division of Emergency Management,” DeSantis explained. “When we have a hurricane, we have people staged here for hurricane response normally. We have it, when we have linemen come in to do power, we have to set up areas for them. You have this type of stuff. This is not our first rodeo, detaining illegal aliens is a little bit different, but logistically, we know how to do that.”
DeSantis also touted the difficulty detainees would have escaping from the facility.
“If a criminal alien escapes, you have nowhere to go. What are you going to do? Trudge through the swamp and dodge alligators 50 or 60 miles to civilization? Not going to happen,” DeSantis boasted. “It takes this deportation mission out of the hair of our local and state law enforcement. This has no impact on Florida residents, some stuff does have impact on them in more populated areas, this answers the call. All you need is a bus to move them 2000 feet that way, they get on a plane and they are gone.”
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