Electronic emails show the administration of Desantis to blind local officials with

TALLAHASSEE, Florida (AP) – The administration of the governor of Florida Ron desantis left many local officials in the dark on the immigration detention center that rose from an isolated landing floor in the Everglades, the emails obtained by News show, while depending on an executive order to develop the land, hired contractors and the lawsu regulations

Electronic emails show that local officials in southwest Florida were still trying to pursue a “rumor” about the extensive installation of “Alcatraz Crocodile” planned for their county, while state officials were already on the ground and sent the suppliers through the doors to coordinate the construction of the detention center, which was designed for Aluses thousands of migrants and went up.

“It’s not great!” A local official told the director of the state agency leading the construction.

The more than 100 emails dated from June 21 to July 1, obtained through a request for public records, underline the vertiginous speed to which the governor’s team built the installation and the extent to which local officials were blinded by plans for the complex of improvised stores and trailers in Collier county, a corner corner and corner states of the states of the states of the White Tierra and the corners.

The executive order, originally signed by the Republican governor in 2023 and extended since then, accelerated the project, allowing the State to take land owned by the County and avoid the rules in what critics have called an abuse of power. The order granted the state sweeping authority to suspend “any statute, rule or order” considered to make the response to the “emergency” of immigration.

A DESANTI representative did not respond immediately to a request for comments.

Known as the Training and Transition Airport Dade-Collier, the landing floor is about 45 miles (72 kilometers) west of the center of Miami. It is located inside Collier County, but it is property and is administered by the neighboring Miami-Dade County. The AP requested similar records of the Miami-Dade County, which is still processing the application.

For Desantis and other state officials, building the facilities in the remote Everglades and appointing it after a notorious federal prison was as dissuasive elements. It is another sign of how the administration of President Donald Trump and his allies depend on the tactics of fear to press the people who are illegally to leave.

Detention center at the Everglades? ‘I’ve never heard of that’

Via News

Collier County Commissioner Rick Locastro, apparently heard for the first time on the proposal after a resident interested in another county sent him an email on June 21.

“A citizen asks about a” detention center “proposed in the Everglades?” Lotter wrote to the County Manager Amy Patterson and other personnel. “I’ve never heard about that … Am I missing something?”

“I am not aware of any request for the use of the land that proposes a detention center in the Everglades. I will verify with my admission team, but I do not believe that this proposal has been received by zoning,” said the director of Planning and Zoning of the County, Michael Bosi.

Since then, environmental groups have filed a federal lawsuit, arguing that the State illegally ignored federal and state laws in the construction of the installation.

In fact, Locoastro was included in an email of June 21 of state officials that announced his intention to buy the airfield. Locastro is located on the Board of Directors of the County but does not lead it, and its district does not include the landing floor. He forwarded the message to the County prosecutor, saying “Am I not sure why they would send me this?”

In the email, Kevin Guthrie, head of the Florida Emergency Management Division, who built the detention center, said the State intended to “work in collaboration” with the counties. The message referred to the Executive Order on illegal immigration, but did not specify how the State wanted to use the site, apart from the “future emergency response, aviation logistics and staging operations.”

The next day, the Director of Emergency Management of Collier County, Dan Summers, wrote an informative session for the County Manager and other local officials, including some notes on the “rumor” he had heard about the plans for an immigration detention center at the airfield.

Summers knew the place well, he said, after doing a detailed survey of the site a few years ago.

“The infrastructure is, well, nothing more than some team barns and a mobile starting office … (Mosquito and mosquito infested),” Summers wrote.

FdeM told Summers that while the agency had surveyed to the landing floor, “mobilization or action plans are not executed at this time” and that all the activity was “researcher,” Summers wrote.

The emergency director said that the lack of information “was not great”

Evan Vucci through News

For June 23, Summers was running to prepare a presentation for a meeting of the County Commissioners Board the next day. He shot an email to the director of the FDEM, Kevin Guthrie, seeking confirmation of basic facts about the airfield and plans for the detention center, which Summers understood that it was “conceptual” and in “only discussion or research stages.”

“Is it in the plans or is there a real operation established to open?” Summers asked. “The rumor is operational today … ???”

In fact, the agency was already “on site with our suppliers”, coordinating the construction of the site, replied the head of the FDEM office, Ian Guidicelli.

“It’s not great! That is not what was transmitted to me last week or during the weekend,” Summers replied, adding that he would have “egg on my face” with the Sheriff’s office of Collier County and the Board of Commissioners of the County. “It’s a Collier County site. I’m on your team, how about the courtesy of any coordination?”

On the night of June 23, FDEM officially notified the Miami-Dade County that was taking the land owned by the County to build the detention center, under emergency powers granted by the Executive Order.

The plans for the installation caused concerns among the lifeguards in Collier County, who questioned which agency would be responsible if an emergency weakened the site.

The discussions on the subject were tense sometimes. The head of local firefighters, Chris Wolfe, wrote to the Chief of Emergency Medical Services of County and other officials on June 25: “I am not trying to discuss with you, but simply looking for how we are going to prepare for this that is clearly within the jurisdiction of Collier County.”

‘It is not our circus, nor our monkeys’

Alexandra Rodríguez through News

Summers, the Director of Emergency Management, repeatedly contacted FDEM to obtain guidance, trying to “eliminate part of the confusion” on the site.

While he and other county officials waited for details of Tallahassee, they resorted to the local media to obtain information, sharing links to stories between them.

“Continue to come,” Summers wrote to the communications director of John Mullins County in response to a news article, “from his Tally crickets at this time.”

With the hope of administering any setback for the county tourism industry, local officials maintained a narrow with the coverage of the installation media, observing that the news quickly spread from local newspapers in southwest Florida to national points of sale such as the Washington Post and the New York Times and International News to Britain, Germany and Switzerland news sites.

As the questions of the journalists and the complaints of the interested residents became local officials, they aligned the legal documentation to show that the airfield was not their responsibility.

In an email chain labeled, “not our circus, not our monkeys …”, the County prosecutor Jeffrey Klatzkow wrote to the County manager: “My opinion is that we have no interest in this airport package, which was acquired by the eminent domain by Dade County in 1968”.

Meanwhile, the construction on the site was coming, with trucks that arrive around the clock with portable toilets, asphalt and construction materials. Among the companies that hooked billionaire contracts for work were those whose owners generously donated Desantis and other Republicans.

On July 1, only 10 days after Collier County learned for the first time the plans, the State officially opened the installation, welcoming Desantis, Trump, the Secretary of National Security Kristi Noem and other state and national officials for a tour.

An Emergency Management employee of the County fired an email to Summers, asking to be included in any visit to the installation.

“Absolutely,” Summers replied. “After the president’s visit and part of the chaos in the place at the site, we will take them all there …”

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Kate Payne is a member of News’s body/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a non -profit national service program that places journalists in local writing rooms to report covered issues.