Public records related to Florida’s so-called “Alligator Alcatraz” migrant detention camp have essentially disappeared into what one expert called a “black hole.” Over 90 pages of contracts reviewed by TPM were removed from an online transparency database operated by the state; in other cases, public records requests have been met with what an academic called “ghosting” and outright denials. Multiple experts told TPM the handling of documents related to the project is “disturbing” and may be a violation of state law.
“What’s happening in that camp is of national interest and national concern,” Barbara Petersen, the executive director of the Florida Center for Government Accountability, told TPM in a conversation last week. “And the fact that the state is hiding information about the contractors, it’s just — it’s unbelievable and it’s inexcusable.”
Petersen, an attorney whose organization has engaged in lawsuits against what it sees as violations of open records rules in the state, said the situation is part of a larger pattern under Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).
“DeSantis sets a new standard for the black hole. … He is the least transparent governor. I’ve been in open government now, you know, since 1991,” Petersen said. “In our experience, the only way to get information from the DeSantis administration is to sue them. … And we’ve had to do that many times.”
DeSantis’ office did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story.
The governor and his allies have spearheaded the development of the “Alligator Alcatraz” facility in the swampy Everglades. Since the site was officially opened last month, attorneys and other advocates have raised alarms about brutal conditions and lack of legal access. While Petersen accused DeSantis of having a broader issue with transparency, she stressed the uniquely urgent situation at the camp.
“This is an issue of national and even international interest. … There are allegations of extreme humanitarian concerns. There’s allegations of constitutional violations, due process violations. It just goes on and on and on,” Petersen said. “And that he is trying to hide this kind of information? It is unconscionable. I don’t know how the man sleeps at night. I really don’t.”
In the weeks since the camp was established, there has been a spate of lawsuits, political outcry, and even a diplomatic dispute over some of its detainees. There has also been extensive reporting on the hundreds of millions spent to quickly build the facility. TPM covered some of the contracts DeSantis’ office and the Florida Department of Emergency Management entered into to construct the site, which involve significant amounts of money and, in at least one case, disaster preparedness resources being diverted in the rush to set up the camp. During the course of producing that story, between July 15 and 16, PDF files of contracts related to the project that we had questioned DeSantis’ office about were removed from the Florida Accountability Contract Tracking System (FACTS). TPM was first to report on the removal of “Alligator Alcatraz” contracts from that public database.
Single-page summaries of those contracts were later uploaded to the site. In total, TPM noted that 94 pages of material were removed from about a dozen contracts that TPM had been tracking, all of which had been associated with the project based on information that originally appeared in FACTS.
The disappearing documents have since been noted by multiple other news outlets that have covered the camp.
State Rep. Anna Eskamani, a Democrat who has been a prominent critic of the conditions and costs associated with the camp, also highlighted the removal of the contracts from FACTS as it was happening. In a conversation with TPM late last month, Eskamani did not mince words when asked about the situation.
“It’s clearly illegal,” Eskamani said.
Like Petersen, Eskamani said the removal of the camp records is part of a broader pattern of stonewalling by the DeSantis administration.
“It’s such an intentionally obtuse environment that has no clarity — and it’s all by design,” she said.
Eskamani was among a bipartisan group of lawmakers that were given a tour of the facility on July 12. According to Eskamani’s written notes, which she shared with TPM, the group witnessed detainees “chanting ‘libertad,’” which means “freedom” in Spanish, and signaling that the water quality was poor. She said the tents where they were held were “very warm” and the people detained inside were forced to drink from a sink attached to a toilet.
Afterwards, Republicans defended the facility while Democrats decried the conditions there. Eskamani described the tour as part of a larger push to obscure the issues with the project.
“You can’t sanitize people in cages as much as you try, and that was definitely the effort,” Eskamani told TPM. “It was basically a damage-control tour. … They never let us talk to any detainee.”
Eskamani also suggested the handling of contracts and public records related to the project is an attempt at “avoiding public scrutiny.”
Florida officials have pointed to an exemption in the state’s public records law related to “trade secrets held by an agency” as the reason the pages of the contracts were taken offline. Florida Statutes section 119.0715 specifies that “trade secrets” are “confidential and exempt” from the state transparency’s laws and the section of the state constitution that requires access to public records. The brief summaries of the dozen contracts reviewed by TPM that were uploaded to FACTS after the initial documents were removed all included language noting thatthat said they, “do not contain information identified as confidential and exempt … as provided by section 119.0715, Florida Stuates.”
DeSantis faced a question about the removal of the contracts from FACTS when he held a press conference at the detention camp on July 25. The governor asked Florida Department of Emergency Management Executive Director Kevin Guthrie to “address the contract issue.” The Department of Emergency Management (DEM) was listed as the purchaser on all of the “Alligator Alcatraz” contracts reviewed by TPM.
Guthrie, who was appointed by DeSantis in 2021, said he was “riled back up” as he suggested allegations the contracts were removed from the internet were “false.” However, within that very same answer, Guthrie admitted the documents had been taken down and replaced with “summary sheets.” As he described this, Guthrie said the changes were made because the full contracts contained “proprietary” information related to the “competitive” contracts.
“So, what happened was our team put the actual detailed line item [purchase order] that then now every competitive contractor can see what their rate is,” Guthrie continued. “So, we took that down. We’ve replaced it with summary sheets on the actual amount that they’ve been given. So that’s what’s happening.”
A spokesperson for the DEM referred TPM to this press conference in response to inquiries about the contracts earlier this month. The department did not respond to multiple subsequent requests for comment concerning specific aspects of this story.
Trade Secrets
Experts who discussed the situation with us said the handling of the contracts does not comply with the law or with the state’s past practice. Specifically, they noted the law requires exempt material to be redacted rather than removed wholesale.
“If there is information in a record that is exempt under the applicable public record statute, the general rule is that you can only redact that specific information,” Adam Marshall, the senior staff attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, explained to TPM. “You cannot withhold other information that is not exempt.”
Marshall further said, “It’s hard for me to see how every detail in a contract could be a trade secret.”
Indeed, several details in the over 90 pages removed from the dozen “Alligator Alcatraz”-related contracts noted by TPM do not appear to be relevant to any of the vendors’ business practices. Some of the removed information include lines about the “mission location” and “incident name” that specify the contract is related to the detention camp site. In two cases we reviewed, the information taken out leaves no mention of the site whatsoever on the FACTS site or in the summary sheet.
Like Marshall, David Cuillier, the director of the Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project and co-director of the Brechner Center for Advancement of the First Amendment at the University of Florida, said officials are supposed to specifically redact exempt material rather than withholding documents completely.
“They’re supposed to redact. That’s clearly not redaction — that’s pulling all the material out that matters,” Cuillier told TPM last month. “What they’re supposed to do is go through with a black pen.”
Cuillier specifically rejected the notion that the handling of the contracts is in line with the “trade secrets” exemption.
“They’re using the trade secrets exemption — that it would materially harm the companies and their competitiveness,” Cuillier said. “That’s not what they’re doing. They’re deleting everything and having a vague cover page. That’s not complying with the law.”
He also suggested the move was clearly tied to the reporting on the camp as well as criticism from its opponents.
“Not every state requires this information to be posted online proactively. … It’s a great system and it’s bad when they pull something and clearly it’s tied to the reporting that went on, and the politics,” Cuillier said.
“Someone’s saying, ‘Hey let’s get that offline.’ That’s unusual,” he said. “It’s uncool and it looks really bad. It’s not a good look for an agency.”
Eskamani, the Democratic state representative, and Petersen, the executive director of the Florida Center for Government Accountability, both offered particularly blunt assessments of the claim dozens of pages of contracts were removed due to the trade secrets exemption.
“I think all of it’s bullshit,” Eskamani said. “They only pulled it down because they realized that it was bad for them. It was a PR disaster for them.”
Eskamani pointed to a thread on the social media site “X” where investigative reporter Jason Garcia cited specific passages in the Florida statutes that require officials to post “a property redacted copy of the contract or procurement document” rather than a “summary sheet.”
Petersen had a similar take.
“I think it’s horseshit,” Petersen declared.
“They’re required by law to post contracts. It’s section 215.985 Transparency, Florida Act,” Petersen later added. “215 is very specific about what information must be included on those contracts and my understanding is that they’re not including that information in the summaries.”
Petersen further said her organization has seen abuses of the “trade secrets” exemption in other cases.
“Frankly, we’ve had a problem with the trade secret exemption for years,” she said.
‘Ghosting’
The disappearing contracts are just one aspect of the apparent secrecy surrounding records from “Alligator Alcatraz” that Petersen and other experts suggested violates the law.
Florida has long been known as a state with a strong commitment to transparency, however, multiple sources who spoke to TPM said the officials there have recently evaded public records requests in ways that seemingly disregard local laws. TPM experienced this stonewalling as we sought records related to “Alligator Alcatraz.”
Along with reviewing the contracts and tracking the material that was taken offline, TPM has filed multiple public records requests as part of our reporting on the facility pursuant to Florida law. Those requests have, thus far, not yielded any documents. That silence is part of what the experts we spoke to described as a broader trend in Florida.
Cuillier, the leader of the institutions dedicated to free speech and freedom of information at the University of Florida, said the practices of ignoring requests entirely and implausibly denying the existence of responsive records are a growing problem both in the state and nationally.
“Theyre breaking the law. Unfortunately, that’s becoming more common everywhere. We’re seeing ghosting of requesters left and right, not just at the federal level, but also at the state level,” Cuillier said.
TPM made requests early last month for records related to the detention camp from DeSantis’ office and the Department of Emergency management. The governor’s office did not respond at all. A spokesperson for DEM told us they had “no responsive records” when we asked for any of Guthrie’s correspondence in a six month period that included the name of the facility and the site where it was located.
Eskamani, the state representative, said she has had little luck with her own public records requests on multiple issues in Florida.
“I made like seven requests,” Eskamani said, with a laugh. “Florida under DeSantis takes months to fulfill requests. You basically have to get an attorney to threaten to sue.”
Petersen described a similar experience.
“This is the way they operate,” Petersen said of the DeSantis administration. “They’ve got unlimited pockets right? So, we can sue them and they can drag it out, paying their high priced lawyers,”
Petersen noted Florida has a specifically strong commitment to transparency.
“It is so contrary to the spirit and intent of Florida’s long tradition of open government and it’s also a violation of not just the law, but the constitution,” she said. “Florida has a constitutional right of access. … In the state constitution, Article I Section 24(a) gives us a right of access to the records of all three branches of state government.”
She argued DeSantis’ handling of public records requests routinely flouts these rules.
“DeSantis violates the law, the public records law,” Petersen said. “He shows absolute disdain for our constitutional right of access. And the purpose of that law is to oversee our government and hold it accountable for its actions.”
Marshall, the senior staff attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, tied the situation to an “incredibly unfortunate” larger trend at both the state and federal level where officials are resisting public records requests.
“It shouldn’t be the case that you have to file a lawsuit just to get a basic response,” Marshall said. “At the end of the day, it has the effect of inhibiting the ability of the public to know what their government is doing and that’s not good for anyone.”
In recent years, over 1,000 new exemptions have been added to Florida’s public records law. Beyond the information blackout at “Alligator Alcatraz,” Marshall suggested that has led to a dark new reality.
“I think that the Sunshine State’s reputation on transparency is certainly dimmer now than it used to be,” Marshall said.
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