Florida doesn’t want to pay $180k for court-ordered phones at Alligator Alcatraz

After spending hundreds of millions dollars on Alligator Alcatraz, the DeSantis administration says that complying with a federal judge’s order to provide more phones for people being detained at the site would be too costly for Florida taxpayers.

In a filing in federal court on Wednesday, lawyers for the Florida Division of Emergency Management said the court-ordered expansion of unmonitored phones for legal calls would require the state purchase approximately 77 cell phones and would take 60 hours to install.

The tab for Florida taxpayers would be roughly $180,025, plus an additional maintenance cost of $6,283. That’s less than a third of what the state has paid a private law firm to argue against expanded phone access at the site, according to state spending records.

The state’s lawyers asked Middle District Judge Sheri Polster Chappell to pause her order increasing detainees’ access to attorneys at the Everglades detention center. They argued that the state has not received any reimbursement from the federal government and that, even if it did, it might not cover the additional phones.

“These mandatory actions will cost the State money – both in the purchase of new items and replacement of materials, as well as the expended staff time,” attorneys wrote.

The cost of the phones would be a tiny portion of the half-billion dollars the state has poured into immigration enforcement using the governor’s emergency fund. The state has been pressing the federal government for a $608 million grant to cover the state taxpayer funds used to construct and operate the detention facility, but that money hasn’t materialized.

This case is one of two federal legal challenges against the facility where arguments have boiled down to the exchange of cash between the DeSantis administration and federal immigration officials.

In this case, former detainees are accusing state and federal officials of violating their First Amendment right to counsel by restricting phone access. In another federal case, environmental groups and the Miccosukee Tribe are accusing the government of violating federal environmental review laws to construct the facility.

On Tuesday, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court’s ruling in the environmental case. That order briefly required the government to begin closing the site and barred the detention of new detainees there before it was paused last fall and formally overturned this week.

In the majority opinion in this week’s ruling, the appellate judges noted that the tent detention camp was built at the state’s expense. They also noted that, until federal officials agreed to cover a significant share of the costs, the site remained largely under state control.

The appellate judges ruled that “until Homeland Security officials decide to fund the facility,” it could not be subjected to federal rules.

Since last summer, when federal officials announced that the DeSantis administration would be reimbursed for the cost of building a tent immigration detention center in the middle of the Everglades, the state has repeatedly said in federal court that it has not yet received a penny.

The site, hastily erected through no-bid contracts, transformed 6,000 acres of the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport into a temporary tent detention center. Federal officials had estimated the annual cost at $450 million, but records obtained by environmental groups showed that the state had planned to spend more than $1 billion of taxpayer dollars.

That figure was later revised to $608 million when the federal government promised the DeSantis administration the full amount of the Department of Homeland Security’s state detention grant program.

The state’s reimbursement application, however, has been paused many times due to errors. The Federal Emergency Management Agency also changed its position, stating that it would not give Florida a blank check but would reimburse costs broken down per detainee, excluding any funds the state spent on construction.

The Florida Legislature put new limits this year on the governor’s emergency fund, which was first created in 2022. Now, the governor’s office has to seek approval from a legislative committee to spend money from the pot on any emergency that extends beyond sixty days.

Under Florida law, the governor can only issue a state of emergency for two months at a time. DeSantis has extended a 2023 immigration state of emergency — which gives him access to the pot of state money he’s used on Alligator Alcatraz — 21 times.

This story was originally published April 24, 2026 at 1:36 PM with the headline "Florida doesn’t want to pay $180k for court-ordered phones at Alligator Alcatraz."

Churchill Ndonwie

Miami Herald

Claire Heddles

Miami Herald

Claire Heddles is the Miami Herald’s senior political correspondent. She previously covered national politics and Congress from Washington, D.C at NOTUS. She’s also worked as a public radio reporter covering local government and education in East Tennessee and Jacksonville, Florida.