May 07, 2026 11:37 AM UTC

Turns Out Running a Massive ICE Detention Center is a Terrible Idea

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• by: Colorado Pols

Not even a year after opening a controversial immigration detention center in Florida dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” officials are already considering closing the site because it has become prohibitively expensive to operate.

As The New York Times reports:

Florida is in talks with the Trump administration to shut down a high-profile immigration detention center that opened last summer in the Everglades and has cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars to operate, according to a federal official, a former Immigration and Customs Enforcement official, and a person close to the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The shutdown talks are preliminary, the people said. But officials at the Department of Homeland Security have concluded that it is too expensive to keep operating the center, known as Alligator Alcatraz. Homeland security officials have also come to consider the center ineffective, the federal official said. All three people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal talks.

The DeSantis administration has been spending more than $1 million a day to run the center, which is in a swampy, isolated area between Miami and Naples. Some private vendors hired by the state to operate it have been struggling to front costs, according to the person close to the DeSantis administration.

The fact that federal and state officials already want to close a massive detention center that just opened last July is quite the endorsement…for Democrats opposing similar facilities in Colorado. As Colorado Newsline reported in late February:

Located about 30 miles northeast of Denver, the 1,200-bed Big Horn Correctional Facility, formerly known as the Hudson Correctional Facility, has sat empty since it was shuttered in 2014. It’s one of several new facilities in Colorado proposed by ICE as the agency ramps up its operations to support President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation campaign, boosted by $45 billion in new funding for immigration detention passed by congressional Republicans.

In a letter Tuesday to ICE Director Todd Lyons and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, U.S. Rep. Brittany Pettersen and Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper expressed “profound concern” about a contract reportedly awarded to private-prison company The GEO Group to hold ICE detainees at the Hudson facility…

…“There’s not a chance in hell we’re going to sit back and allow this rogue, lawless agency to expand their despicable operations in Colorado,” Pettersen said in a statement. “My stomach is sick thinking about the families being ripped apart and the kids forced to endure a lifetime of trauma and heartbreak from losing their parents.”

A contract for “comprehensive detention services” at the Big Horn facility was issued to The GEO Group on Dec. 1, according to documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado. The value and terms of the contract are redacted in the documents. A separate $39 million contract was previously awarded for the six-month period beginning in April 2025, but the prison remained empty.

Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” fiasco should be a killshot for a proposed detention facility in Hudson, Colorado — and another black mark for Rep. Gabe Evans (R-Ft. Lupton), who never met a Trump administration proposal he didn’t endorse.

As the Times reports, Florida has still not received $608 million in federal reimbursements to cover what the state fronted to build the Everglades prison. Local officials in Colorado would be foolish to support any further movement on immigrant detention centers in Colorado. Given that state lawmakers had to slash another $1.5 billion from the state budget this year, Colorado can’t be relying on I.O.U. notes from the Trump administration.