Trucking companies, a Miami-Dade County rock mine and an emergency management firm are the first to profit from taxpayer dollars tied to “Alligator Alcatraz,” the nickname Gov. Ron DeSantis has given to a migrant detention center project under rapid construction in the Everglades. The facility spans parts of Collier and Miami-Dade counties, bordering Miccosukee tribal land and Big Cypress National Preserve near Tamiami Trail.

Dozens of trucking companies are hauling thousands of tons of lime rock from greater Miami to Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport in the Everglades, where roads are being rebuilt and fill is being dumped as part of the installation of the detention center.

No environmental studies have been done, and no Army Corps of Engineers permits have been acquired, prompting environmental groups and the Miccosukee Tribe to file lawsuits to try and stop the project.

DeSantis declared a state of emergency for Florida two years ago and has used the ongoing emergency as his reason for building the “Alligator Alcatraz.”

“The Miccosukee Tribe of Indians is opposed to the proposed facility, given the impacts on the Big Cypress and Tribal communities living within it,” tribe Chair Talbert Cypress said in a prepared statement. “We have reached out to both the DeSantis and Trump administrations to determine a path forward.”

For now, the path forward means hauling in the fill.

Alligator Alcatraz will cost the state’s taxpayers some $450 million a year to finance, DeSantis has said. The money would be refunded to the state by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, meaning national taxpayers eventually would be footing the bill.

But for now, millions of dollars are going toward setting it up.

Miami-Dade County trucking companies are continually hauling fill into what was planned in the 1970s to become the world’s largest airport at 54575 E. Tamiami Trail in Ochopee.

A grassroots effort by environmental advocates, led by Marjory Stoneman Douglas, ended that airport project.

IRG Global, a company formed in February as an offshoot of ARS Global Emergency Management, received a $19.6 million contract from Florida in mid-June to fly a plane load of refugees from Israel to Tampa, public records show. IRG Global also has, so far, accepted a $1.1 million contract for support in setting up the new detention center, a contract with the state said.

IRG Global officials could not be reached for comment. The company’s website shows it has no expertise in designing prisons or detainment facilities. It is a company geared toward disaster response. Its contact information page shows an Immokalee headquarters at 12551 Wainwright Drive.

Gulfshore Business visited the address on June 30 and found a wooded area with a padlocked green gate and a dirt road winding through the trees. Two deer were spotted behind the fence, but no signs of an active business were visible. That site also has an airstrip and was the former site of the Hendry County Correctional Institution, which housed almost 800 prisoners and was shut down in 2011 by then-governor Rick Scott in an effort to save taxpayers $30 million.

IRG Global’s website contact page shows photographs of the same portable buildings that have appeared in Associated Press photographs of what is being installed at the Alligator Alcatraz site, about 6 miles east of Clyde Butcher’s Big Cypress Gallery.

The location is about 50 miles west of White Rock Quarries, a distance that factors into the cost of the lime rock, said Drew Shedd, sales representative for Martin Marietta, which paid a record-setting $620 million in 2024 to buy a rock mine off Alico Road in Lee County. It was the largest real estate transaction in Lee County history and demonstrated the kind of money it takes to excavate rock; in addition to the land, the deal included the equipment.

“What would be good for roads would be base material,” Shedd said. “A limestone base. A load of that, you’re probably looking at around $18 to $20 per ton.”

A typical dump truck carries about 20 tons. But transportation from 50 miles away can be about double that price per ton, Shedd said.

“That’s a major factor when we’re pricing projects,” Shedd said of the distance, which he speculated was the reason for his company not getting an opportunity to bid. “We’ll take a look at where our competitors are. Let’s say a project is 10 miles away, you’re looking at an additional $6 per ton. If a project is 20 miles away, an additional $8 to $9 a ton.

“You’re looking at an additional $20 a ton on the whole.”

In just an hour on June 30, roughly 100 dump trucks entered the gates of Alligator Alcatraz, where National Guardsmen armed with machine guns stood watch. That’s about $4,000 per hour of material heading through the gates at that rate.

The amount of material heading to the site alarmed Naples resident Franklin Adams, 87. In the 1970s, Adams teamed with Douglas and what became the nonprofit organization Friends of the Everglades in preventing the Jetport project from continuing at the same site. Ever since, the airstrip had been used only for training pilots.

“What’s taking place now with Alligator Alcatraz, it’s actually a violation of everything we agreed on in the past,” Adams said. “We’re very concerned about it. If we have a hurricane this summer, what they’re putting there and all the human waste that will be out there, it’s just going to wash out into the woods there and filter downstream into Everglades National Park. It’s a real travesty. And we didn’t know about this. But we have to react to it the best we can.”

Adams was not swayed by DeSantis’s public comments that there would be “no environmental impacts” from this project — an impossibility given the amount of fill being trucked inside the gates.

“How are they going to evacuate it if we get a September hurricane?” Adams said of the facility projected to house up to 5,000 detainees. “It’s just foolhardy and ill-advised. There’s no guarantee that the federal government is going to pay for it. It comes back to the taxpayers, who don’t seem to want it in the first place.

“Are they criminals? Or just people who are falling into a political trap? I don’t know. That’s beyond my knowledge. All I know, is this is the wrong place to have it. And we’re all being lied to. All of those trucks are hauling fill in there. It’s going to change the area around it.”