Corruption by Any Other Name (Part II)
A two-part series of commentaries by Barrington Salmon examines the consequences of decades of Republican rule in Florida
By Barrington Salmon
In announcing the closure of the Everglades immigration detention center known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said the notorious facility — denounced as inhumane by civil rights groups — was always meant to be only temporary until more permanent detention centers could be secured, and federal officials now have that capacity.
“Alligator Alcatraz fulfilled the role that it was designed to serve,” DeSantis said. “Today it now has zero detainees. It has helped remove many, many dangerous people from the street and get them out of not only the state of Florida, but the United States of America.”
DeSantis said he was proud of what his administration had accomplished.
“We stood this up,” he said. “We surged critical resources. We built critical infrastructure. We were able to manage very complex operations, and we were able to execute the mission when called upon efficiently.”
These comments are vintage DeSantis, a staged response to his deliberately inhumane decisions as he tries to save face. He may tout efficiency, but despite being open for less than a year, Alligator Alcatraz will likely turn out to be the single most expensive immigration detention center in the history of the United States, critics assert.
CBS News Miami reports that financial analyses by its journalists indicate that operating the detention camp in the Everglades and Baker County cost as much as $3,571 per detainee each day, more than 20 times the national average. Critics have decried these massive, no-bid contracts, which drew more than $1 billion in taxpayer dollars away from essential state health, food security, and housing programs.
A recent Miami Herald investigation estimates that while misusing more than $1 billion on the detention camps, he guided taxpayers’ dollars to between 55 and 83 companies owned or operated by political allies, friends, and donors.
Over a year, DeSantis repeatedly dipped into Florida’s Emergency Preparedness and Response Fund — described by Democratic and other critics as a slush fund — to finance his anti-immigrant operation, circumventing regular channels and ignoring checks and balances.
Since 2023, DeSantis manipulated the process by waiving more than 24 state laws and regulations and extending the 60-day emergency more than 20 times. All to pave the way to erect “Alligator Alcatraz,” the detention camp on land sacred to the Miccosukee Tribe. Critics are deeply concerned that there has been no accountability to the legislature or the public and everything was conducted in secret.
Human cost
DeSantis’ vanity project came at a tremendous human cost. He boasts that his agents have seized almost 22,000 undocumented immigrants. Hundreds disappeared into the detention network, all dehumanized and mistreated.
Amnesty International paints pictures of cruelty and despair. Human beings forced to endure calamitous living conditions: trapped in cages; no AC in sweltering heat; overflowing toilets; and routine flooding during severe weather.
When it comes to the public’s money, DeSantis and most of those in the political class act as if the supply is infinite and that he has the right to use it for projects that harm the very people they purport to serve.
Sea change
Also of widespread concern is DeSantis’s use of taxpayers’ money to subvert higher education while enriching his MAGA buddies, as well as the manner in which he has hijacked higher education.
“This is a conservative capture of Florida’s public higher education,” said Robert Cassanello, a University of Central Florida history professor who is president of the United Faculty of Florida union. “It’s all ideological, and politically driven.”
As the Florida Tributary’s Michael Vasquez reports, DeSantis has used an army of loyalists to build a conservative higher-ed empire.
“With only a year left in office, Gov. Ron DeSantis has a limited window of time to wield power in Tallahassee. But on college campuses across Florida, DeSantis continues to expand his army of political loyalists — both college presidents and university trustees, who are poised to dominate for many years to come, no matter who is elected governor in 2026,” Vasquez wrote.
“As a result, higher education could become DeSantis’ enduring political legacy. And the governor’s final year in office will provide still more opportunities to push academia in a conservative direction.
Vasquez reports that DeSantis’ hijack is “intertwined with the conservative Heritage Foundation … which authored the controversial Project 2025 blueprint to guide the Trump administration’s efforts to reshape Washington.”
“With President Donald Trump term limited as well, aligning with Heritage could benefit DeSantis politically in the future,” Vasquez explained. “This Heritage-inspired sea change has outraged alumni and the communities surrounding Florida’s college campuses, some of whom view DeSantis’ allies as interlopers — many of the leaders DeSantis has installed have no previous connections to the schools they now run, limited experience in higher education, or live out of state. Those limitations have not stopped these new leaders from burrowing deep into the universities’ affairs, according to public records obtained by The Tributary, from micro-managing the materials presented in individual classrooms to replacing signs on bathrooms.”
Well-placed allies
Guided by the Heritage Foundation, DeSantis, Christopher Rufo, and a coterie of far-right allies on the boards of trustees and elsewhere in the higher education firmament have engineered the changes.
DeSantis has forced out progressive and forward-thinking university presidents and replaced them with men and women carrying the anti-Black, anti-woman, anti-LGBTQ+ banner. They willingly manipulate curricula, erase Black history, dismantle DEI and affirmative action programs, and impose a cold, sterile, far-right conservative syllabus across campuses.
Meanwhile, allies on trustee boards engineered exorbitant paydays for each president installed at public state universities.
The takeover began when DeSantis and his allies dismantled New College of Florida. Since 2023, former House Speaker and close DeSantis ally Richard Corcoran has run the Sarasota university. His base salary is $699,000, while his total annual compensation frequently exceeds $1.2 million, including perks like an $84,000 housing stipend, a $12,000 car allowance, and lucrative performance/retention bonuses.
In February, he received a $200,000 bonus performance award for the third year in a row, and that was followed by another $600,000 bonus days later for an “accrued retention payment” for continuing “uninterrupted service” for the past three years.
He is feasting at the public trough despite New College having a student population of fewer than 700.
Former Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez was named sole finalist during the search for president of Florida International University. She’d served as interim and was voted in as permanent last summer. Nuñez has an annual base salary of $925,000 as part of her five-year contract and she is eligible to receive annual performance bonuses of up to $400,000.
Former Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. was ensconced as president of the University of West Florida with a lavish total annual compensation package of $946,040. This includes a $674,000 base salary, up to $107,840 in annual performance-based incentives, a $60,000 housing allowance, a $14,000 car allowance, and an $89,000 retirement supplement.
As has become commonplace in this process, Diaz was approved in a single-candidate competition — despite clear rules intended to require “more than two” finalists for trustees to consider.
Diaz has been a chief architect of the state’s retooling of public higher education with support from both DeSantis and members of the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Phoenix columnist Diane Roberts captures the greed with which these people operate.
UF trustees chair Mori Hosseini, a real estate magnate, rules the University of Florida the way DeSantis has operated in the Sunshine State, she writes: “No part of the university is free from his influence. He pushed UF’s distinguished College of Medicine to hire the state’s science-challenged surgeon general. Now UF pays Dr. Joseph Ladapo more than $300,000 per year — not that he does anything so pedestrian as actually teach classes.”
Few of those in DeSantis’ orbit aren’t enjoying exorbitant paychecks at the public’s expense, Roberts added.
“A trustee who hasn’t been identified had a hand in arranging an adjunct gig at UF’s law school for Florida’s attorney general [James Uthmeier]. The average pay for an adjunct professor is between $3,000-$7,000 per course. Uthmeier’s getting $100,000 for two hours of instruction per week.
“The AG doesn’t see the problem.”
Uthmeier recently staged an event to announce a statewide audit: He wants to “combat public corruption” and root out “bribes, kickbacks, conflicts of interest, evidence of money being spent on special interests, personal interests, personal gain,” Roberts wrote.
Critics have not taken all this lying down. Students, faculty and labor unions have fought back against the corruption of the process, several have filed lawsuits, but DeSantis and crew have sidelined or ignored detractors and continued on their merry way.
The profound hostility that Florida’s politicians have towards universities and their insistence on using ideological purity tests to choose their leaders not only “makes Florida look stupid,” as Roberts points out, but it is also jeopardizing the futures of the next generation.
Barrington Salmon lived and wrote in Florida (Miami and Tallahassee) for 20 years. He is a 2017 Annenberg National Fellow (University of Southern California) who freelances for publications including Trice Edney Newswire, and his stories appear in Yahoo, Raw Story, The Miami Times, and the Phoenix. He formerly wrote for The Final Call, NNPA/BlackPressUSA, Al Jazeera, The Washington Informer, and Sputnik News. Salmon was educated in the United Kingdom, Jamaica, and the United States. He lives in the nation's capital and can be heard on his Livestream video blog, “Speak Freely with Barrington Salmon.” Connect with Barrington on Speak Freely and follow him on Instagram and on his Facebook pages, Barrington M. Salmon & BarringtonSalmonWrites.
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization. This story is republished with their permission. To support Florida Phoenix, click here:
See you soon
I’m on a two-week sabbatical, but will be back before the Florida primary election. In the meantime, I hope to use this space to share articles of interest from guest contributors from time to time, such as today’s piece by Barrington Salmon.
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Today’s sponsor: The Strange Files
Alexander Strange wants to get to Florida in the worst way. So, he arrives in a coffin. Chilling in its own right but made more so by the prediction of a New Orleans soothsayer that he soon will face death. Little does he know how true that will be. But he’ll find out soon enough at the Devil’s Millhopper.
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I think it’s time DeSantis is sent to a detention center, along with the rest of the Fla Republicans.
So glad I attended UF in the 70's and not now.