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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has announced the opening of a new immigration detention and deportation center in North Florida dubbed "Deportation Depot."
On Thursday (August 14), DeSantis unveiled "Deportation Depot," a facility located at Baker Correctional Institution in Sanderson near Lake City Airport, which will serve as a hub for detaining, processing, and removing undocumented immigrants, per ABC News.
“We are authorizing and will be soon opening this new illegal immigration detention, processing, and deportation facility,” DeSantis said at a press conference. “We’ve been securing the border, enforcing immigration laws, and removing illegal aliens… We have done more on this than any other state by a country mile.”
DeSantis touted that the center will be able to hold over 1,300 detainees.
The move marks the second high-profile immigration facility opened under the DeSantis administration in recent months. In July, Florida unveiled “Alligator Alcatraz,” a detention site in the Everglades at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport. A federal judge temporarily halted further construction on Alligator Alcatraz last week over concerns about potential environmental harm to the Everglades ecosystem. Use of the existing facility is allowed to continue during the 14-day injunction.
President Donald Trump has praised the Florida facilities, saying he’d like to see similar centers in “many states.”
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