Alligator Alcatraz Closes, Was It Worth The Cost? Listeners Weigh In

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This is about putting a makeshift detention center in the middle of the swamp with no infrastructure and the cost that it took to do that. Telling me there weren't other options. We know there was at least one because eventually we saw Deportation Depot open up at an old correction facility in North Florida. That only cost a few million dollars to retrofit to become an immigration detention center. That's still up and running and seems to be working well with no issues. Not to mention, I didn't even add in the fact, how much has this cost the state in lawsuits? defending alligator opatraz in court yeah it was like a good PR stunt i remember when they first put that video out of what it was going to look like and they had the merge and all of it and it seemed like it was a joke like a PR stunt and then all of a sudden they're like actually let's do this yeah and i just can't get over the fact that you've got administration that is going after cities and counties and calling them out for wasteful spending, yet not acknowledging, you know, maybe we didn't do everything right here. Maybe this was a waste of taxpayer money. We put up a poll on Instagram. about this and what was the result of it? So 65% said yes, it was a waste of money and 35% said no, it was not a waste of money. So the majority of people definitely think that it was a waste of money. We also got some talkbacks on this. Here's what Fernando listening to us in South Florida had to say. Yes, it was. The Biden administration opened the borders and let millions of people here in Nevada and something had to be done. Yeah, it cost a lot of money. but it helped and to send a message. It was their fault, man. They let everybody in, unvetted, and somebody had to do something. And this is what Peter said. Yeah, I do believe it was worth the cost. It's worth any cost to get rid of illegals, especially criminal illegals. But here's the thing. This is where I think everybody's missing the point. You could have still done that. You could have still had a detention facility, which I was in favor of. I said, I have no problem with the state adding detention space. It was needed. But you could have done it at a different location, a different facility that was already built out, that already had toilets that were working. That didn't cost three times as much as other detention facilities. It didn't cost hundreds of millions of dollars only to be eventually torn down after a year. I mean, come on, people. Either we want.

Are government officials to be responsible with our taxpayer dollars? Or we don't. There's got to be some consistency here. Lots of reaction coming in to my contention that alligator Alcatraz just wasn't worth the cost, the hundreds of millions of dollars of cost to get that facility up and running for really less than a year. This is what someone had to say listening to us in South Florida. Maybe the next time the Democrats are in charge and we flood the... the zone with all kinds of illegals again. We won't do an alligator alcatraz. Maybe we'll do something more fiscally responsible, like leaving them out on the street and letting them have their way with American citizens. Anyway, the other fraud that's being discovered is no less bad. I don't know what kind of argument that is, to be perfectly honest, that's, I think, a straw man argument. The choice isn't between spending hundreds of millions dollars on alligator octetra's and just letting people who are here illegally run wilds. The choice is... spending hundreds of millions of dollars on alligator aquitres or spending a whole lot less money on a different attention facility. That was more efficient. Yeah. Here is what Ches had to say listening to us in Tampa Bay Area. Ryan, quit crying about the money they spent. We were spending it anyway paying all their housing and their Medicare and their food stamps and everything like that. Now we got rid of them. Now we're not paying that. So now we'll be okay. It's better to have them gone than stay here for years and years paying all these subsidies. That's not the choice. Yeah. You could have saved all that money. Sometimes it's really hard for people to, sometimes it's really hard for people to criticize something like this. If they like what the result was and they liked the idea of Alligator Alcatraz, it sounded tough, it sounded cool, then they cannot look at the facts. The choice isn't letting them stay here and be a suck on taxpayer dollars. The choice was. to detain them in a detention center that cost a whole lot less, like Deportation Depot up in North Florida. Yeah, where you don't have to spend $92 million on portodys. Yes, come on, people. Come on. All right, when we come back and thank you for all the talkbacks. You can, of course, leave yours WFLA or WIOD on your iHeart Radio app. Hit that microphone icon, and you can record your audio message. Listen live to the Ryan Gorman Show on IHeart Radio every weekday morning on WIOD in Miami. WFLA and Tampa, presented by Farah and Farah, accident attorneys Tampa.

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