If you believe the New York Times, the curtain will soon fall over a horrendous blot on our laws and values: “Alligator Alcatraz” (I call it The Traz for short) is closing, as soon as next month.
I also say “if you believe,” because the Times based its story on four anonymous sources, so it’s not yet been confirmed. I’ll choose to believe it provisionally, keeping an eye out for whether it pans out.
One factor that bolsters the report’s credibility is that the Everglades gulag will be closed, not for any idealistic reasons: no repentance by the responsible officials, no abandonment of the ethnic cleansing and racist cultural bleaching agenda behind it. There has been no viral outbreak of respect for the rule of law, the constitution, or court orders.
Nope. Instead, what is set to kill off the ‘Traz Monster is one of the oldest and most cynical arrows in the MAGA-Trump quiver: nonpayment of their bills.
The Traz suppliers, the people and companies who are bringing in the food, hauling out the portapotties, keeping the lights on (24/7), doing the health care (inadequate) and so forth, for an estimated 1400 monthly detainees in the Traz, 30 miles deep into the Everglades wilderness — have not been paid for months.
The amount they’re owed is as much as $608 million bucks. That was supposed to come from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)— yes, the agency that was showered in last year’s big brute-iful bill — with more money than God. (I exaggerate; it was merely $170 billion, somewhat less than the Divine’s budget for Purgatory.)
Still, DHS got $45 billion for a sickening new American concentration camp system, a war chest much bigger than the cost of the entire federal prison system.
But DHS can’t — or more likely won’t — pay the guards at one of its signature locations.
Why not? The huge DHS load of taxpayer boodle was still under the ultimate control of the White House and the Commander in Thief. Funds for The Traz were supposed to flow first to Florida state officials, who took over the operation from the feds.
But Florida’s governor, Ron De Santis, had dared to challenge the president in 2024. Although his campaign, much ballyhooed at first, never took off, and belly-flopped halfway down the runway, DeSantis is still not a favorite of the Boss. Does this have something to do with why the suppliers for the Traz, have been left holding the bag?
Maybe, but my guess is, not much. After all, screwing over subcontractors who bring in everything, is by now a semiautomatic Trump Art of the Deal reflex.
Documents recently unsealed by a Florida judge, and viewed by The Florida Tributary, a nonprofit investigative news site, showed:
“just how much more the state intended to spend on the facilities, after quickly inking multimillion-dollar deals with vendors that included companies whose owners are major Republican donors to political committees for DeSantis, President Donald Trump and other GOP candidates.”
The unsealed records also showed that DHS officials agreed to a $608 million reimbursement for camp vendors last October. But since then, the feds have refused to hand over any funds.
It is hardly a surprise that vendors who are faithful MAGAS did not get any better treatment than the many previous small fry who bet their business futures on Trump’s failed casinos (or his phantom “university,” etc.).
The faithful have always been the first targets of the Trump grifts. And they have kept coming back for more. (Are they beginning to recognize and tire of the constant fleecing? New polls suggest that some are; but I wouldn’t rush to bet the ranch on it. Or even the ranch dressing.)
The NY Times noted that “Having financially strained vendors could be problematic for Florida once hurricane season begins on June 1. Many of the same vendors working at the detention center would also be obligated to respond to a hurricane — for example, to remove debris after a storm. Their ability to respond might be limited without sufficient cash to front those costs, the vendor warned in the interview.”
“Problematic”?
I read that last sentence three times. Each time the sense increased that there were multiple messages in it: the surface implication is that some vendors could end up like Spirit Airlines,
But between those lines was I also hearing a veiled threat? The more solvent vendors, I think are hinting that they could cut their losses, ditch the Traz and its deadbeat state factotums, and take their skills and staff elsewhere, where the paychecks for hauling loaded toilet tanks are as real as their contents.
Not exactly a boycott, but almost, and surely better business.
As for governor DeSantis, instead of sympathy he delivered a third rate imitation of the standard ignorance dodge by the man he tried to supplant two years ago:
“Mr. DeSantis said in a news conference in Miami last week that he was unaware of any delays in vendor payments and directed questions to the state’s emergency management division.”
“Unaware”? Really? Let’s get the video of that presser. Did DeSantis then move on to the next Trump ploy and doze off in it?
Two final thoughts about the victims here:
First, concerning the 1400 monthly detainees subjected to this administrative version of Hades: some officials still mechanically still repeat the tired mantra, “we’re getting the worst of the worst.” But painstaking independent analyses have repeatedly demolished that claim.
They show that barely 5 percent of those snatched by ICE and sent to the camps over the past year have been convicted, or are charged with serious violent crimes. That would be about 70 of the 1400 held in the Traz. Subjecting the 1330 others to the brutal conditions there is major crime of violence itself.
Then there are the millions of law-abiding Florida residents facing the dawn of a six-month hurricane season with a seriously weakened, demoralized, under-prepared and underfunded state emergency response force. (Thanks, Ron, and Mr. President.)
But who cares? In 2024, Hurricanes Milton & Helene hit Florida, and by the time they were done, 287 people were killed, and there was more than $100-plus billion in damages. (Okay, not all the devastation was in Florida; but still.)
Hurricanes in the Sunshine state are no joke.
Yet experience shows that chronically corrupt government is also chronically incompetent. And in hurricane season, that combination has proven to be deadly. If nothing changes, the bite of Alligator Alcatraz could well be felt in Florida far beyond the ranks of hapless undocumented, or bankrupt vendors.
But why worry? If the worst happens, the Big man will surely hold a wake for all the victims, right in the new ballroom. Count on it.