An obscure consulting firm in Jacksonville, Florida was awarded a $78 million contract in early July 2025 to provide a range of critical services at a hastily built immigrant detention center in the Everglades, dubbed by state officials as “Alligator Alcatraz.” The firm, Critical Response Strategies LLC (CRS), employed staffers who were visible at the facility, which was constructed on environmentally threatened land seized by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) through invoking an immigration “state of emergency” issued in 2023. 

As Jacksonville-based news outlet The Tributary reported, the state of emergency had also suspended many requirements for state contracts and permits, allowing for an increase of no-bid contracts with little oversite. CRS has reportedly been tapped to handle staffing, training, and security for the so-called Alligator Alcatraz. While the firm was found to have been once linked to one of DeSantis’s largest financial supporters, parts of CRS’s website—as well as a copy of its contract with the state—appear to have been taken off the internet. 

Since opening on July 3, Alligator Alcatraz has faced intense criticism from Democrats, environmentalists, Indigenous activists (the Miccosukee and Seminole Nations both claim the area as ancestral lands), and immigrant rights groups. Within the day after its opening ceremony, The Miami Herald reported, the detention center was already flooded from a “garden-variety South Florida rainstorm.” As the deportation of detainees held at the facility ramped up, civil rights lawyers sought a temporary restraining order on the grounds that it barred their clients from attorney meetings. The 39-acre camp, now holding more than 1,000 men, has also been plagued by reports of deteriorating conditions, such as overcrowding in cage-style pens, a lack of food, and sewage backups.  

Sources: The Guardian, The Tributary, The Miami Herald, NBC News