James Uthmeier confident feds will ‘largely’ reimburse state for Alligator Alcatraz

Florida is still on the hook for illegal immigration warehousing costs at Alligator Alcatraz, but Attorney General James Uthmeier ultimately expects the federal government to pay the state back for some of the costs taxpayers have shouldered.

“I do believe that the state will largely be reimbursed for those costs, given that we were delegated by the federal government. It was approved. The President went down there for the grand opening. We were helping out as they were trying to get Congress to strike a deal and provide resources for this important mission,” Uthmeier said in Titusville.

The state was counting on $608 million from the Federal Emergency Management Administration, money Uthmeier said in a court filing may not actually “materialize.”

The Department of Justice says any reimbursement would cover “operational costs,” not the estimated $245 million spent on “construction or facility modification,” suggesting that the infrastructural costs will come at the expense of traditional priorities of the state, such as health care, corrections, infrastructure and funding nonprofits.

Uthmeier expects the “state’s footing of the bill … in the long term will go down,” but did not volunteer numbers.

Instead, he said Florida could carry the costs until the federal government pays the state back for volunteering to assume a federal mission without fixed guarantees of being made whole. Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie said U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, a former two-term Florida AG, has held up the clawback.

Uthmeier credited Gov. Ron DeSantis with “the largest surplus we’ve ever had in history” and said Florida can handle the uncertainty, which could take a long time to resolve.

“We fix the problem, and then as reimbursement is provided in the year or more that follows, we get made whole where appropriate,” Uthmeier said.

“But we’re not going to sit back and watch our communities suffer while we’re going through the administrative process of dealing with the federal government. We’re going to get the job done, and we’ve got the financial resources to do it in the short run, because we’ve got the best run economy in the country.”

While Floridians bear the collective costs, some contractors enjoy windfalls, including the evocatively named Doodie Calls, which scored $92 million for porta-potties.

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The Florida Phoenix contributed to this report.