Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during a news conference about immigration enforcement on May 1, 2025, in Miramar. | Rebecca Blackwell, AP file
Published on August 17, 2025 at 3:02 pm
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When it comes to movies, the sequel is rarely as interesting as the original.
The concept is familiar, as are the actors and the lines, and novelty is sacrificed in pursuit of the scalability of franchise.
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In that sense, the repurposing of the Baker Correctional Institution west of Jacksonville likely wasn’t as shocking to most readers as the Alligator Alcatraz unveiling was down toward the Everglades.
Ultimately, it’s a prison that was there anyway, in the middle of nowhere, with infrastructure already in place.
Leaving aside the morality of whether the state of Florida should be in the business of immigrant internment, the logistics make sense out toward Sanderson.
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As DeSantis said last week, it’s an easy drive to the Lake City airport. He also quipped that it would be good for local businesses, citing a Busy Bee convenience store as an illustrative example … and raising questions as to whether he knows of any other businesses in the area.
And in a bit of irony, the inmates at the alliteratively dubbed “Deportation Depot” actually will get treated better than state prisoners in some respects.
“We will have external HVAC units piping air into these facilities,” promised Director of Emergency Management Kevin Guthrie, who noted that state prisons don’t have to be “climate controlled.”
Of course, that’s an indictment more of how Florida treats its prisoners, in a system that is perpetually underfunded and deals with massive staff attrition as a result. Especially in light of the governor’s vetoing legislation this summer that would have brought AC installations to state prisons that don’t have them.
The choice of Baker County served as an okey doke of sorts from the DeSantis administration, which looked at Camp Blanding but ultimately landed on a facility with an actual physical prison.
And it comes amid anecdotal evidence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement apprehending undocumented immigrants at various places in the Jacksonville area. Others, like Springfield coffee shop owner Diana Marcela Mejia-Pedraza, were arrested by local cops and handed over to the feds under suspicion of being illegally in the country. At last report, she was at a hospital in South Florida.
Here in Jacksonville, the battle against illegal immigration has tantalized Republican policy makers, especially those who might plan on political futures.
Ordinance 2025-138-E, which was passed by an 11-7 City Council vote, called on the Donna Deegan administration to block city funds from going to unauthorized aliens via cultural service grants. While the bill was vetoed and the veto survived an override attempt, the concepts are expected to recur in the final budget next month.
There’s scant optical risk for politicians on the right who champion these issues, and in a time when political futures are secured or fumbled in partisan primaries at least as much as in general elections, the battle against illegal immigration is an easy sell.
For starters, the “pro-amnesty” Republicans, who see the issue like Ronald Reagan in his second term, are irrelevant in the party. They don’t control the mechanisms, and they don’t connect with the grassroots.
Additionally, unless they happen to be contractors or farmers or restaurant owners, odds are strong that these Republicans have little to do with the class of people they seek to purge. While moral hazard may exist in the abstract, it’s not a real concern materially.
However, there may yet be material concerns, depending on how wild weather gets this storm season.
Ultimately, Florida is still fronting the costs for its deportation lockups, which are expected to be reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency at some point. FEMA money comes in on its own time frame, of course, as local officials in places that suffer hurricane landfalls and storm surges will tell you.
It’s very early in our hurricane season, which these days sees most of its action between Labor Day and mid-October. It’s easy to imagine a scenario where Florida gets walloped by storms in the coming weeks and is negotiating reimbursement for migrant prisons and storm recovery all at the same time.
Let’s hope that doesn’t come to pass.
