Transcript of #BecauseMiami: Deport FIFA New

Jetzt nur du, dein Podcast und eine leckere Auszeit. Ab zu Aldi Nord. Für 2,99 bringst du deine Mittagspause mit Sushi ins Rollen. Mmh, lecker! Und für 1,99 gönnst du dir danach noch eine kleine Eiszeit. Bei Aldi Nord findest du immer das Passende. Klingt gut? Dann probier die Snacktime Sushi Box ab 205 g für nur 2,99 Oder Mookie Sandwich Eis je 8 Stück für nur 1,99 Das ist Gutes für alle zum Aldi-Preis. Jetzt in deiner Filiale. ALDI. Gutes für alle.

An avid Trump supporter taken into federal custody by immigration authorities. Please get her home. She does not deserve this. I didn't vote for this.

I just got deported. Adiós. Because I vote for Donald Trump. Bound face down in the road. In the road. I'm in cuffs for Donald Trump. This is exactly what we bought it for. Lock us up, let's go! Bobby Trump! Woo! Maga is español, por favor! Now you're fucked, get on the stroke! Hands up! The boot that's stomping my throat! Choke me, papi, it's so good! Show me your Madonna face, Donald Trump! I is agents killing for Oh, stealing folks, mastern-crow, sangre fría. I don't know Trump. Viva la Gestapo! Deport my wife, por favor, is Donald Trump. It's a total shitshow, a shitshow, because I vote for Donald Trump.

Happy Motherfucker's Day, because Miami is back and we are taking no prisoners, unless you count Alligator Alcatraz, in which case, which is shutting down. I mean, right out of the gate with F-bomb.

Roy, we can say that now.

Roy, Alligator Alcatraz is shutting down. I don't know where all those families from the Midwest are gonna— they have to go back to Disney World, I guess, or Epcot. They're not gonna have Alligator Alcatraz to buy t-shirts from anymore. That'll be later on in the show. Also, we're gonna gerrymander this state into oblivion because, man, if you can't win an election on ideas, you gotta cheat, cheat, cheat, baby. I'm telling you, taking no prisoners.

They're coming all over the place.

Joining us now in studio, Tomas Kennedy, policy analyst at the Florida Immigration Coalition.

I gotta ask, were the dancers in front of the Trump golden calf in your video— that's AI-generated, right? Because I don't know what's—

No, those are the pastors who prayed in front of the golden statue, because the Bible says that that's a good thing to do. Yeah, whatever's in the Bible, that's what we do in Doral.

Yeah.

Okay. Tomas, your latest op-ed, the headline reads, Miami police have become a show-me-your-papers patrol despite public opposition. So apparently, according to a Florida law enforcement database that keeps track of these sort of stop and— they're not stop and frisk, but they're like stop and ask for papers if you're brown and/or speaking Spanish. The City of Miami Police Department, City of Miami Police Department is the number one city law enforcement agency in the state of Florida. For what you're calling "Show Me Your Papers." What is it that we know about this?

So, correct, there's a public database put out by the state of Florida to sort of tout their immigration enforcement numbers. What's peculiar about this database is it doesn't show any enforcement by federal entities, meaning ICE or the Border Patrol. This is by state authorities. Out of the first 11 entities outlined, number 1 is the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which is statewide.

Right, statewide.

Right, it's the most cellist empowered agency to conduct immigration enforcement. And then there's 9 sheriff's departments.

I guess the Florida Highway Patrol would probably have to be up there too.

It's part of the FDLE.

Oh, right, statewide. Yeah.

Um, 9 sheriff's departments.

That's entire counties then, the sheriffs.

The sheriffs are municipal entities that are independent, right? We elect the sheriff.

Right, but those are larger areas. I'm saying those are countywide agencies.

Correct. City of Miami is the 11th entity And City of Miami runs its police department as part of— we don't elect a sheriff in City of Miami, right? It, it, it's at the pleasure of the commission, city manager, mayor, right? So in terms of municipal city entities, City of Miami would be the 11th in total, but the number one city in immigration encounters according to the state of Florida, not me, according to this database put out by the state of Florida.

Now, I think we know 70% of Cuban Americans in Miami-Dade County supported Donald Trump for president, voted for Donald Trump if they were able to.

A lot of diasporas, a lot of people in our community supported Donald Trump that are now being de-documented. They're losing status. They're being left vulnerable.

What are the stats? The headline at New York Times earlier this year was, to their shock, Cubans in Florida are being deported in record numbers. Cubans had long benefited from legal privileges unavailable to immigrants from other countries. And President Trump has changed that. So we literally have a population here that voted to deport themselves. What are we looking at statistic-wise in terms of deportations of Cubans? Right.

I don't want to get too in the weeds on it, but because of changes on the— on the— their possibilities of being paroled, and administrative bureaucratic changes around the Cuban Adjustment Act, Cubans are unable, or it's a lot more difficult for them to regularize, adjust their status than it once was. So a lot of the Cubans that recently arrived in the past couple of years years, have been left in a sort of legal limbo, where they are vulnerable to detention. That's why so many of them end up at Alligator Alcatraz. You've had Cubans in this show, right, where their family members or loved ones are held in that detention center. Obviously, Venezuelans have lost Temporary Protected Status, TPS, to the tunes of hundreds of thousands, Haitians, Nicaraguans, Salvadorans, etc. I mean, we're talking hundreds of thousands of people in our community have lost legal status. And now they are targets of immigration enforcement, again, not just by ICE and Border Patrol, but also by our state police and our municipal police forces that are empowered to do so under these 287 police-ICE collaboration agreements, which the city of Miami is a party of.

How much more likely is it that Cuban Americans, for example, are to be deported under this second Trump regime than they had been in the past?

Well, you just put out that great New York Times piece. I think it was by Patty Mazzei who wrote it. Trump has— the Trump administration has deported 3 times as many Cubans than the last 3 administrations combined. I mean, you know, thousands of people more. So it's a significant hike in the number of enforcement targets.

So Miami mayor, the new Miami mayor as of last December, is Eileen Higgins. The headlines all over the world were Eileen Higgins, Democrat, flips the red city of Miami blue. We've talked about on this show before what bullshit I think that spin is.

But listen, she also flipped the county commission red, right?

When she— right, when she left. But Democrats in this state need all the W's, fake or not, that they can get.

When some, you lose some.

Yeah, I mean, apparently in the same election too. But she also beat a candidate by like 18, 19 points that was endorsed by Donald Trump, very much branded a MAGA candidate, and she defeated him, I mean, handily. But she also talked a lot of shit. She was sitting in the seat you're in right now, lying to me through her teeth over and over and over again.

I saw the episode.

We, we— I'm sorry. And yeah, you should be listening. So I was listening. So, so I'm going to be her— the Mayor Eileen Higgins unofficial campaign promise scorekeeper, and it's not going well.

The bullshit meter.

One of the things she talked about a lot on the campaign trail and when she was finally elected in December and in interviews through January, talked a lot about the so-called 287 agreement, which is the very pact between local law enforcement agencies or state law enforcement agencies and ICE, the federal government, to effectively undertake immigration enforcement, the same shit that that Florida law enforcement database is.

Yeah, police-ICE collaboration.

Right. So here are some of the things that Eileen Higgins said about that before we learned that the City of Miami Police Department was the number one city law enforcement agency in the state for this kind of fuckery.

There's no reason in the City of Miami that our police department should be in the job of federal immigration enforcement. ICE and its tactics have been in my community for over a year. They have been causing great fear and terror in our residents. It is inhumane. It is cruel. I'm a Catholic.

It's—

it's— I can barely grapple with the lack of humanity around all this. We're a place where most of our residents were born somewhere else. And so the harsh, cruel, inhumane, horrible trickle-down hatred tactics that are coming from the federal government, I am convinced, made some people want to vote for me because they think I will stick up for them, uh, in the face of this sort of behavior.

Well, I'm awfully broken up over her Catholic guilt and pearl clutching about this. Tomas, how do you respond to mayor— new mayor, Miami mayor Eileen Higgins?

I mean, rhetorically, I agree with everything she's saying, but I, you know, I'm not— I'm not the mayor. I would like the mayor who has the ability to affect change, to affect the, uh, agenda items, in the City of Miami Commission to put items up or affect the ability of items to be heard, to rescind this agreement, to do something about this. I would like for her to do it, you know, just like she told Reverend Al Sharpton in that last clip. She said, "People voted for me because they trusted me to stick up for them." Well, stick up for us in a real substantive manner. You know, her election I think it's not just me saying it. A lot of observers, including the mayor herself, said people voted as a referendum partly on this immigration question, right? And a lot of the people that supported this, Francis Suarez, gone. Joe Carollo, gone, right? So yeah, I mean, especially, you know, with City of Miami Police being one of the highest enforcers of this 287 police-ICE collaboration practices. And so many people who are, again, losing status, being left vulnerable, being left targets of this immigration enforcement.

Yeah, it's awfully disappointing to see the mayor not move on this in a substantive manner, in a practical manner, right?

Yeah, that's all well and good, but you know what I'm really concerned about? FIFA.

Me too, actually. Yeah, talk about that.

So let's run this clip. A call for FIFA to guarantee protection for World Cup fans planning to attend the matches here and just hang out at watch parties all around town.

South Florida organizations are concerned about the safety of the visitors and local families. They want FIFA to make sure there will be no agents detaining anybody or asking people for documents.

We are here to warn anyone.

Considering travel to Florida, of the very real risks of racial profiling, discrimination, and detention that you may face at the hands of ICE, CBP, and even our state and local police here in Miami. Something like hundreds of the world's oldest and most storied human rights and civil liberties organizations signed on to this, like, travel warning. Basically, if you come to the United States for 'World Cup, we cannot guarantee your safety. We cannot guarantee that your human rights will not be violated.' I'm laughing because it's so sick and twisted, but this appears to be having an impact with respect to travel plans, with respect to hotel reservations, and this is all related to ICE and these sort of like stop-and-ask-for-papers, right?

I mean, you know, I think a large part as to why people are not coming for for the FIFA World Cup is related to travel costs and just the price gouging. But look, we've had incidents during the Club World Cup where asylum seekers were detained in the parking lot and ended up at immigration detention centers. We've had tourists with valid travel visas being detained here in Florida multiple times, ending up at places like Alligator Alcatraz. Billy, we had the mayors boat, on a boat chartered by Telemundo, with Daniela Levin Cava, mayor of Miami-Dade County. She was going to a Club World Cup event mid-last year. It was detained by the U.S. Coast Guard with federal immigration agents from the Border Patrol, held for 2 hours. She never made it to her, you know, FIFA party. And they asked the immigration status of the catering crew and the boat crew. So it's not just that they're detaining migrants, you know, who want to watch the games, you know, in the parking lots of these FIFA events, which is happening. They did this to the mayor of Miami, you know what I mean? Like, if they're willing to do that to theoretically the most powerful person in the county, imagine what they would do to you, the little guy.

Thomas, tranquilo, tranquilo. Headline in the New York Times last week: Miami host committee of FIFA says Rubio, Marco Rubio, Secretary of State told us that ICE will not be at World Cup stadiums. Are your concerns assuaged? Are you reassured?

And that was in response to the press conference that you participated on, so thank you so much for all your support, always. But, um, look, Rodney Barreto, who's the host of, of, of— who's one of the heads of the Miami host committee, saying, "Trust me, bro, I talked to Marco Rubio, and there's not going to be ICE there," that's just not credible. That's not policy. You know, what needs to happen, there needs to be a formal declaration—

determined that was a lie, right?

This would be a formal declaration with the host committee, with FIFA, saying everybody, there will be a moratorium on enforcement operations during FIFA events, the Fan Fest, the games. Come, this is a welcoming place. You know, saying trust me, bro, I talked to Rubio on the side and everything's all good, it doesn't pass the smell test. And you know We have given, as you've outlined, I think, in this program before, we have given FIFA in Miami-Dade $60 million in taxpayer funds, and I think, what, $5.7 million in City of Miami in in-kind services and other things. I think, you know, we're nearing the $70 million bill for taxpayers here.

To billionaires, right? Sports welfare.

FIFA, who's expected to make $13 billion with no revenue sharing for host cities and municipalities. I think we're within our rights to say, look, We want you to advocate for the safety and security of our fans in this immigration enforcement context. I think that's a valid ask.

You think we should get something for that money, bottom line? And I will say—

I don't know if we're getting much. All I want is for them to lobby the administration.

Well, just some reassurances that we're a tourism town, dude.

Right.

And so if people are gonna come here, we just want to be reassured that if you're gonna spend the money on airfare, on hotels, on tickets to the World Cup games, that you're not going to be needlessly harassed, that you're not going to have to undergo unlawful searches and seizures at the airport of your person or your property, have your electronic devices seized, downloaded, or God forbid wind up in prison in El Salvador. I don't think it's that much to ask for, certainly for the tax dollars that we're using to subsidize this event.

And look, this is going to sound incredibly naive, But we have to remember what FIFA is, was conceptually, you know, built to be, right? It's supposed to be, was supposed to be a nonprofit organization for the advancement of football, soccer, as a worldwide sport, right? And it's supposed to be a force for good. Obviously, we know it's a corrupt entity that bribes, you know, public officials everywhere and sports washes some of the worst dictatorships through, you know, the decades, whether it's the military junta in Argentina or the theocratic dictatorship of Qatar or whatever, you know. But theoretically, it is supposed to be a nonprofit that just advances the sport of football, and it's really become a disgusting, corrupt, price-gouging, abusive entity that mistreats its fans and, you know, squeezes them for all they can.

And really, I never thought I'd live to say it, But the truth is, is that our community, our city, our county of immigrants is perhaps no longer safe for immigrants.

Chris Cody, when you come over to my house and we put on the games, I got basketball, I got baseball going on. But what do I lay out for you and the boys for entertainment and drinking?

Miller Lite.

Uh-huh.

Those beautiful white cans. On draft or the bottle if you prefer.

Oh, when you open that with the can though, and you—

kach-kach-kach-kach-kach-kach.

One of the best sounds on the planet. You pair that with the right game, you take that first sip, we both look around. It's not a bit.

I have goosebumps thinking about the first sip.

We take that first sip, we open it up, and we're looking around. Ah, there's just that 5 seconds of almost eerie silence where you're just soaking it all in. And you're like, man, did we make the right call or what? That's why we reach for Miller Lite. It's clean, refreshing, easy to drink, brewed for taste with simple ingredients.

Ah, that golden color.

Oh, just 96 calories and 3.2 carbs. The original light beer since 1975, and it still hits different.

I love you, Miller Lite.

Cheers to legendary moments with Miller Lite. Great taste, 96 calories. Go to millerlite.com/dan to find delivery options near you, or you can pick up some Miller Lite pretty much anywhere they sell beer. It's Miller time. Celebrate responsibly. Miller Brewing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 96 calories and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces.

The NBA playoffs are here and DraftKings Sportsbook, an official sports betting partner of the NBA, brings excitement to every game all postseason long. When the lights get brightest, The best players in the world show you exactly who they are. Playoff stars turn it up round by round, and DraftKings turns it up with them from the first round through the finals. Bet player props, bet live, and stay in the action the entire time. New DraftKings customers bet just $5 and you'll get $100 in bonus bets instantly. Download the DraftKings Sportsbook app and use code Dan. So you're ready for the moment. That's what code Dan— turn $5 into $100 in bonus bets instantly. In partnership with DraftKings, the crown is yours. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MY-RESET. New York, call 877-8-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY. Connecticut, call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org. On behalf of Boot Hill Casino in Kansas, wager tax pass-through may apply in Illinois. 21 and over in most states. Void in Ontario. Restrictions apply. Bonus bets expire 7 days after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming Resources, see sportsbook.draftkings.com/promos. Limited time offer.

A group of voters wants the court to block this map, saying it was drawn to intentionally favor the GOP, giving Republicans as many as 24 of Florida's 28 congressional seats. The lawsuit claims the 2026 map packs and cracks Democratic voters in the Orlando area. The suit claims it's a violation of Florida's Fair Districts Amendment.

The Fair District Amendment says that when you go to draw the district lines, you can't do so with the intent of favoring or disfavoring a political party.

The map drawer says he used partisan data. Governor Ron DeSantis has claimed recent US Supreme Court decisions weaken Voting Rights Act protections, giving Florida more flexibility in how districts are drawn. So it's now up to the courts to decide if this map is constitutional. But that decision could take months or even years. That as we're just weeks away from the candidates qualifying deadline for the 2026 election cycle.

If it wasn't for disenfranchisement, Florida would have no franchisement at all. It seems it's looking that way in the whole country, Roy. We are in the midst of a mid-decade redistricting battle that's playing out so far in 8 states but is underway in 4 other states. Those 8 states, incidentally, are 3 what they call blue states. The rest are all red states. And this seems to be legal except in Virginia, except in a blue state where voters actually voted on new district maps, which again are not supposed to happen mid-decade, but they voted on them. And then the Virginia, the state Supreme Court said, fuck you. Sorry, Roy.

We can say that now.

Thanks a lot. When you're this fucked, you have to be able to say it. Stop it. Sorry. So Ah, here's the thing. This all started last year when President Trump basically demanded Texas redistrict the state in order to effectively attempt to reduce the number of so-called blue districts in the House so that the Republicans would be less likely to lose the House in the November midterm elections. And there's all sorts of nefarious ways in which they do this. By the way, Roy, this is what happens when you cannot win on ideas. And ideals and the current state of the economy and the marketplace. And when Republicans are in charge of literally everything from the House to the Senate to the White House to the Supreme Court, and clearly some of these state Supreme Courts as well. So this is what they call a bloodless coup. Not that they would mind spilling some blood, what was January 6th, but this is a bloodless coup. This is some Cuba shit. This is some Fidel Castro shit where you're saying that we don't have to win in the marketplace of ideas. We don't have to win on the state of the economy.

We don't have to win other than by cheating. And that's, I think, what's happening here. That's just my opinion. So I brought someone on who probably shares that opinion. I was— I'm always looking for voices to push back, Roy. You know, I want to do callers, I want to do more voices from the right, but they never accept my invitations. Can you believe— actually, what am I talking about? Most Democrats don't accept my invitations either. Yeah, I mean, you are Just leading the league in bridge burning.

Hashtag because Miami.

Representative Anna Eskamani serves in the Florida House. She represents Central Florida in the greater Orlando area. For people outside of Florida, it's Disney. Actually, that's Kissimmee, but I guess that's part of the greater Orlando area. She is also running for mayor of Orlando in 2027 if there are still elections in 2027. I'm beginning to wonder if there's going to be free and fair elections in 2026. Representative, what the hell is going on? You're up in Tallahassee right now. What's going on in the cock and balls building?

Oh, Billy, it's great to have you back. It's great to be back. Um, not on your show, not in Tallahassee, right?

I got that.

We are back in the state capitol. We're here for the budget, which we still haven't done, which is our one constitutional responsibility and should have been done on March 3rd. Uh, yeah, March 13th. Oh my God, it's been forever.

To be clear, you guys have one job as a Florida legislature in the annual legislative session, which costs us a fortune to send you guys up there to get that job done, and you You did not do the one job you had to do. So now there's this series of special sessions to basically clean up your mess and, of course, create more mess, it seems.

Well, that is a great summary. Yes. Remember, this is Republican-majority legislature, Republican governor's office, and, of course, a Republican takeover of the judiciary. So this is not due to, you know, some sort of partisan stalemate. This is the inner-party conflict in the GOP. So despite being in control of everything, they still can't get things done. And we're facing that moment right now. Now, obviously, we're going to do everything we can to bring money back to our communities, to fund public education, so many other topics like the affordability crisis that we'll be championing. But I'm going to come back after this incredibly unconstitutional and just partisan gerrymandering, as you mentioned, where the governor took a Sharpie and drew his own map, and the bill sponsors couldn't even answer basic questions about it. It was, it was wild to watch.

But they don't have to answer questions about it, right? They have the supermajority. It was going to pass irregardless. Why even bother? They could just come up with two middle fingers to the podium and it's going to pass anyway.

No, I mean, that's the attitude that they carry for sure. And I will say what's helpful for us as members of the Minority Caucus is the legal battle. For me, the fight doesn't stop on the House floor. It starts on on the House floor and building a foundation for litigation. And of course, many lawsuits have been filed. But it's such a— it's just this out-of-body experience to ask, I would argue, very basic questions about your bill, about your map, and you can't answer them. I mean, it's just embarrassing.

I love— and by love, I mean I hate— that your job now up there is to just create grounds for litigation. And here's— there's two problems with litigation. Number one, a lot of the lawmakers up there are lawyers. I have to think lawyer is probably one of the number one professions in the Florida House and Senate. Am I wrong? Including the governor's mansion. And yet they go out of their way to deliberately, year after year, pass what they know to be unconstitutional legislation and then use our tax dollars to hire outside attorneys for thousands of dollars per hour, hundreds of dollars an hour, to then defend what they already know to be unconstitutional legislation, which very oftentimes gets overturned. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it's They appealed so that they could— they could charge more attorney's fees by their politically connected lawyers and, I presume, campaign and PAC donors. And the other problem is, as was evidenced in our cold open, that this could take years. So we could have an election because right now, as of today, the so-called unconstitutional districting is the law of the land. So we could go ahead with elections for that, which a couple of years from now could be declared unconstitutional.

And yet you already have the representatives that were arguably elected unconstitutionally in office Too bad, so sad.

Your assessment is spot on when it comes to the reality of the situation, right? Like, we are at a precipice where despite these maps being unconstitutional, despite the governor's own attorneys and staff saying that they ignored the state constitution, these maps are very likely to be the maps in play for November because any litigation will take years to come to a conclusion. And I want to just amplify a point that I think is worth making. Bill's sponsors and map drawers said that they were ignoring race, so this was race neutral when they drew these maps. I think it's important to stress, oh shit, say something like that. When you say it is race neutral, that is racist. What you're basically saying is that you're ignoring communities of color and you're practicing white supremacy. And it's just It's so bizarre to me that more people don't understand that, right? Like, there's just no way. One of my favorite poets, Noura Wahid, she writes, and I'm not gonna know it verbatim, but she basically writes that if you don't see color, then I'm invisible to you. And that alone is a racist premise that you're just totally ignoring the realities of racism in this country.

And to draw a map where you're ignoring race means you're promoting one race over others. And it's so important for folks to understand that, to uplift that. And obviously, we, we are looking at a landscape where it could be 24 Republican seats and 4 Democratic seats in a state as large and diverse as Florida. I mean, it's just shocking.

Well, let's talk about that because we've been talking around this. We've been— I've been bitching about it. Let's talk about the practicalities of this, what redistricting means, what gerrymandering means, the idea that they're trying to draw more registered Republicans into a district. And I think what's really interesting, and people don't understand this, it's much more of a visual thing, but cracking— what does cracking mean? I mean, we saw that happen in Tennessee where they literally decimated the one Black district in and around Memphis. And this is such a vivid visual, this idea of cracking. So can we talk a little bit about that and what that means when you have a concentrated group of Blacks or Hispanics that make up a not insignificant percentage of a state population, but how they absolutely decimate their representation in government.

Yeah.

So typically it's referred to as, as you noted, cracking and packing. So these are insider baseball terms used in the process of map drawing. So cracking is you are dividing up communities like you noted. You're basically trying to separate historic African-American neighborhoods, well-known Latino neighborhoods, and you're separating them to dilute and water down their voting power. I've also seen cracking in the context of college campuses where student populations will be divided to water down the ability for students to select someone of their choice. Packing is almost like the reverse of that, where you're trying to pack communities of color into one district so they don't have the ability to engage in political power for multiple seats. Was, for example, Congressman Corrine Brown's seat, where it was, uh, this kind of weird snake that went up the St. Johns River from Orlando to Duval, and it was basically trying to pack all the Black voters into one district versus creating multiple majority-minority seats. And so both tactics are wrong, they're unconstitutional, and they, they should be, uh, avoided. But obviously in this case, you know, that was, that was not the situation. They absolutely cracked districts with a goal to dilute the ability for communities of color to be able to choose someone of their choice.

Roy, for the record, cracking and packing is also what Andrew Gillum does on a Saturday night. Damn it.

We can't say that now.

Damn it, Billy.

Billy, no.

Representative Escamani, before we go, I see that one of the lawsuits— I'm sure there's multiple— challenging this unconstitutional gerrymandering and redistricting here in the state of Florida is being challenged in your neck of the woods in Central Florida. You don't have to speak specifically to that I don't know what, if any, familiarity or involvement you have with it. But generally speaking, last word, what's next? Where do we go from here in this midterm elections year when you see an administration who is willing to cheat, willing to literally move the line, and willing, if all else fails, to seize ballots?

So, so many thoughts on this, right? I think one is that we should find a little bit of inspiration in the fact that that to draw this map, the majority party had to dilute current Republican seats. And so, you know, the numbers obviously are, are not ideal, but I also think it's important for us to realize that Trump is— unlike his polling— is in deep, deep water. And we have the opportunity to potentially flip some seats that we never thought we could flip. And of course, we had to run the best candidates in those seats, but don't assume because they say it's a red seat, that's a red seat, especially when you had to dilute those red seats to expand this potential map for, for the GOP. So that's important, is that run everywhere, run hard, and, uh, and also support those candidates that are running on progressive platforms, that are pushing for corporate accountability, that are challenging AI data centers and AI, and are really speaking to where the, the American people are when it comes to the tensions between their everyday needs and the billionaire I also want to, of course, emphasize that the intimidation tactics at polling locations will be real, and we have to be ready for that.

And so we really have to come up with networks of support, mutual aid programs, like do everything we can to help people that are financially struggling right now, also ensuring their access to the ballot is not going to be restricted. And we'll be doing that on the ground in Orlando. I really do encourage folks to pursue those types of efforts in your neighborhood at that local level. That's the only way we're going to be able to take the state back and to build power long term.

Oh, that's BS.

No, totally, totally BS. Representative Anna, I wanted to give Rhonda Sanders an opportunity to respond. Representative Anna Eskamani, find her at AnnaForOrlando.com. That's Anna with two N's. Thanks so much for being here. Good luck up there in Tallahassee. I hope you hit what I think is the best restaurant in town, Waffle House, any one of the six of them. It's a culinary tradition.

Who doesn't love Waffle House?

My bowels sometimes scattered, shattered, and tattered. But enough about Andrew Gillum. Damn it, Billy.

Oh my God, Billy.

There is normal activity outside the immigration detention facility known as Alligator Alcatraz and new complaints about what's happening inside. Just one day after the governor confirmed state and federal officials are talking about closing it down. It was always designed to be a temporary facility. Facility. It has made a major impact, and if we, uh, shut the lights out on it tomorrow, we will be able to say it served its purpose.

Hundreds of millions of Florida tax dollars are being spent to operate the facility, and by the way, all the expenses are reimbursable by the federal government, and, and that will happen.

I know the media has made a big deal. It's FEMA, it takes a while. We're getting it, and you will see that very shortly. Also new, complaints surfaced just today from the wife of a man being held and complaining of no air conditioning, limited food and water. Let's set aside the rampant human rights violations that have been going on in this concentration camp in the Florida Everglades for the last year. Let's just forget about that for just a moment. Well, human rights violations, constitutional violations. Let's just forget that part. And let's also forget this ridiculous spin from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis that this has somehow been a success in some way in terms of moving the needle forward, of getting some of the worst undocumented immigrants and criminals, you know, violent criminals off the streets. Let's just forget the fact that this is just absolute, total, utter nonsense.

Oh, that's BS.

No, totally, totally BS. But let's talk about where it was a success, and that is in the sheer grift and that deflection at the end there where DeSantis is like, oh, but we're going to get paid back. All this money is coming back from the federal government. Part of the reason they're going to shut it down, Roy, is because they aren't getting reimbursed from the federal government for the half a billion plus dollars that have been spent. But the question is, where did that money go? Follow, as they said in All the President's Men, the movie, not the book. Follow the money, as Deep Throat said. And absolutely one of the best follow-the-money journalists I've ever had the pleasure to read, and certainly the best follow-the-money-in-Florida journalist we have, is Jason Garcia, seekingrentsfl.com. He's the leading corporate accountability reporter here in the state, the author of Big Profits, Tiny Taxes, which exposed how corporations dodge taxes, and a 2021 series tracing dark money used in a ghost candidate election scheme. So much to talk about, so little time. Jason, let's follow the money here. I mean, they're going to shut this place down. How much did they spend?

Where did it go? Because clearly it was not a success by any measure, in my opinion. And finally, when do we get that money? When do the feds show us the money that we've been promised from day one on this scheme?

It has been success, a success in one particular fashion, and that is as a marketing gimmick. The world's most expensive marketing gimmick. A chance to sell a bunch of, uh, alligator Alcatraz merch and, and, and get some look like tough guys on Twitter for a few months over the summer last year. But we're talking about upwards of half a billion dollars that has been spent on this one facility, much of that money through contractors that are, of course, major campaign contributors in Florida. And I'll just give you one example just to drive this sort of home. One of the lead contractors on there has been a South Florida company called CDR, CDR, CDR, it's got a number of different affiliates, some of them that do like healthcare treatment and stuff like that. CDR was one of the main contractors on this project, also gave $250,000, a quarter of a million dollars, to James Outhmyer, the appointed attorney general who is widely considered the sort of the brain trust behind building an immigrant detention camp in the middle of the Florida Everglades.

I think it's the first time anyone's used the word brain trust in the context of James Outhmyer. that's really the ticket here. I mean, we could call them campaign contributions, PAC donations, some might call them kickbacks, but that really seems to be the circle or the cycle here, right, with a lot of these contractors who have made— let's be clear, some of them— tens of millions of dollars in a year or less. And where does that money go in addition to the pockets of— I remember you reporting that like some of these companies have existed for about the weeks before Alligator Alcatraz. So some of these were like brand new LLCs in somebody's townhouse or whatever the hell they were that just popped up. And all of a sudden, these major duty donors to the Republican supermajority in this state are getting major duty contracts. Right, right.

Yeah. There was one company that was a brand new company. And this, I think, is the Tampa Bay Times gets credit for flagging this. This. It made a $10,000 donation to, uh, to the Republican Party of Florida just days before getting one of the initial contracts on this facility. So there's been a lot of that. And, and to your point, the amount of money that have gone to some of these contractors, it, it's more than $100 million, or close to $100 million in some case. One of the, one of the biggest vendors that's gotten a lot of attention is essentially a porta-potty vendor, Duty Calls. It's been paid more than $90 million just over the past year operating this facility. And where the irony comes in there is, so a lot of people have used that example as to show what a, what a waste this facility has been, what a waste of money. And you see a lot of politicians in Florida, particularly Ron DeSantis, just recently did this. The Senate, uh, Ben Albritton, the president of the Florida Senate, also got really sort of snooty about this, where they'll, they'll hear that and they'll say, you know, this isn't just porta-potties, you know, this isn't an environmentally sensitive area, we have We have to bring them the water in and then we have to ship it out offsite and treat it so we're not doing any contamination.

It's like, yeah, exactly. That's why you don't build an immigrant prison in the middle of the Everglades.

Also, duty calls. I mean, they should get doctors for the Florida dad pun there. Like, not— I think puns are good, but like, that is not— I mean, come on now. So, I mean, I'm not talking about any specific contract here, but you threw out a bunch of numbers and I mean, let's just look at $250,000 donation on a $10 million contract, if that equation exists, that's a 2.5%— that's less than sales tax. So that kind of vig or that kind of kickback, I mean, that seems pretty low rent. Like, that seems a pretty good ROI, I should say, on these deals. And is this the nature of what's been going on? I mean, can you say— I don't want to say a majority, but can we round that, like, most of the companies and individuals or principals of these companies who have gotten these major duty contracts on this You know, remember, Roy, on this show at the beginning of this, I think Tomas Kennedy was actually here at that time too. We were talking about this is a concentration camp, it is dangerous, it is unnecessary, it is a waste of money. And here we are, like, all of those things have come to pass.

There was just a court decision this week that went against the state, wasn't there, Jason?

That's right, that's right. This was dealing with providing phone access to, uh, to detainees, or the state was complaining that would be too expensive. The same state that, again, it's just spent half a billion dollars on this in the first place, right? And to your point, you know, I wouldn't go so far as to say like all of it is the result of campaign contributions or something like that, but certainly it's all in the mix, right? So many of these vendors are politically plugged-in vendors. They've got some of the biggest lobbying firms in Tallahassee. A number of them are represented by the two firms that employ Ron DeSantis's biggest political fundraisers in Florida, right? And these are all, a lot of these are government contractors in a lot of ways. They're either emergency management contractors or they do a lot of procurement selling supplies to the state. And all of these companies make sure to invest money in campaign contributions and lobbyists and stuff. And it's all part of that kind of, sort of what I often call like conventional corruption, the sort of legalized corruption that we've allowed to sort of take root in this state and country.

So before we go, Jason, ¿dónde está the reimbursement? Where has the governor siphoned this half a billion dollars from, because this was not budgeted for anywhere. He unilaterally, I would argue, misappropriated, if not outright stole this money from clearly from a line item somewhere in a budget. And that is not a rounding error, half a billion dollars. And finally, from day one, they've been promising that FEMA, I guess, from the federal government was going to pay us back. But we have not seen penny one, right? Yeah.

This is— this actually gets into some of the really serious sort of like lawlessness nature around some of this stuff. So where he got the money from, a couple years ago the legislature set up essentially an emergency management fund that was supposed to be for responding and preparing for hurricanes. And it's this pot of money that the governor can tap and spend at will in a declared state of emergency. Well, as soon as they created this slush fund for him, he declared a state of emergency on immigration, which he has now extended for nearly 3 years. We've been in one state of emergency for nearly 3 years, but that's how he's been able to tap into this fund. Fund and pull out half a billion dollars to spend on, again, this, this marketing gimmick, this, this chance to sort of like grab national attention. And in terms of the reimbursement, so the reason Florida has not gotten reimbursement yet is they built— this facility was built illegally. When the Fed— when the federal government builds a major facility like this, they're supposed to do something called an environmental impact study. And, and guess what wouldn't have worked out so well?

An environmental impact study on building a prison in the Everglades on the of manatees. Exactly.

Right, right.

Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. They're like painting the place with manatee blood. And so the—

Manatee blood was my band in high school, by the way.

That's right. This was the subject of one of the lawsuits filed to shut this place down. And what they've been arguing in court is, oh, this isn't a federal facility. This is a state facility. And one of the ways, the fig leaf they've been using on that is the feds haven't actually given us any money for it yet. So they have deliberately withheld— delayed paying the state of Florida back until they can get through to the— until they shut it down.

Right.

The state said the feds will give the state the money once it no longer matters. And it was all a way to allow them to build this facility in absolute defiance of federal law.

Garbage in, garbage out. The immortal words of Miami Mayor Ponzi Postolita, former mayor. If you put garbage in, you're going to get garbage out.

Yeah.

This was a racket. A racket from the jump, and it's exiting the scene as a racket. And all we have to show for it is a bunch of human rights violations and showing the world over that we are no longer this sort of beacon of hope and justice, not only for immigrants, but for the rule of law and the Constitution and human rights. So I guess mission accomplished, Ron DeSantis.

He said it was a success.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jason Garcia, seekingrentsfl.com. I'll see you in Alligator Alcatraz, mi amigo.

Oh my God, I hope not.

Cocaines.