He Just Didn’t Spend It on Floridians.
Every year, Floridians are told to prepare.
Prepare for another hurricane.
Prepare for another insurance increase.
Prepare for higher property taxes.
Prepare for crowded classrooms.
Prepare for another year of not being able to afford a home.
Prepare to do more with less.
Apparently, the only person in Florida who never has to prepare for a budget shortage is Ron DeSantis.
Because when he wanted to build immigration detention camps, he somehow found nearly a billion dollars.
According to a Miami Herald investigation, DeSantis’ administration signed at least 55 contracts worth roughly $1 billion to build and operate two state-run immigration detention facilities, including the Everglades camp his administration proudly called “Alligator Alcatraz.”
A billion dollars.
Think about that for a minute.
A governor who says government spends too much…
…spent a billion dollars building cages.
And before anyone says, “Well, they were all dangerous criminals…”
No.
Reporting found that hundreds of people detained had no criminal charges. Some had pending asylum claims. Some were seeking lawful permanent residence. Many had jobs, spouses, children, and lives rooted in Florida.
These weren’t strangers from some distant place.
Some were Florida’s neighbors.
Florida’s coworkers.
Florida’s taxpayers.
People who helped pay into the very system that ended up locking them behind its fences.
Read that again.
Florida taxpayers helped finance a detention system that could be used against other Florida taxpayers.
If that doesn’t bother you, it should.
Because history has taught us something over and over again.
Governments don’t spend a billion dollars building detention systems because they expect to use them once.
They build them because they plan to use them.
Today it’s undocumented immigrants.
Tomorrow it’s someone with Temporary Protected Status.
Someone whose green card renewal is delayed.
Someone with a pending asylum case.
Someone who showed up for an immigration appointment believing they were following the rules.
Every expansion of government power begins with the promise that it will only be used against those people.
Until one day…
Those people become your neighbors.
Or your coworkers.
Or your family.
Or you.
Meanwhile, back in the real Florida…
Families are choosing between groceries and homeowners insurance.
Teachers are buying school supplies with their own money.
Young adults have given up on buying a home.
Seniors are wondering how much longer they can afford to stay in theirs.
Veterans wait for services.
Communities brace for the next hurricane.
And somehow we’re told there’s never enough money.
Really?
Because when Ron DeSantis wanted a headline, a billion dollars appeared out of thin air.
Imagine if he’d shown the same urgency for lowering insurance premiums.
Or making housing affordable.
Or strengthening schools.
Or helping communities recover after storms.
Or fixing Florida’s crumbling infrastructure.
Instead, Florida got Alligator Alcatraz—a political stunt with a billion-dollar price tag.
One more thing.
According to the Herald, one of the biggest winners wasn’t a construction company.
It wasn’t an engineering firm.
It wasn’t a hospital.
It wasn’t emergency management.
It was a portable toilet company.
More than $219 million.
For porta-potties.
You really can’t make this stuff up.
The question isn’t whether Florida had a billion dollars.
It did.
The question is what kind of governor looks at families struggling to insure their homes, teachers struggling to educate their students, seniors struggling to stay afloat… and decides the state’s biggest priority is building more places to lock people up.
That’s not fiscal responsibility.
That’s not leadership.
That’s choosing political theater over the people you were elected to serve.
Scarlett says no.