blindsided

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration left many local officials in the dark about the immigration detention center that rose from an isolated airstrip in the Everglades, emails obtained by the Associated Press show, while relying on an executive order to seize the land, hire contractors and bypass laws and regulations.

The emails show that local officials in southwest Florida were still trying to chase down a “rumor” about the sprawling “Alligator Alcatraz” facility planned for their county while state officials were already on the ground and sending vendors through the gates to coordinate construction of the detention center, which was designed to house thousands of migrants and went up in a matter of days.

“Not cool!” one local official told the state agency director spearheading the construction.

The 100-plus emails dated June 21 to July 1, obtained through a public records request, underscore the breakneck speed at which the the governor’s team built the facility and the extent to which local officials were blindsided by the plans for the compound of makeshift tents and trailers in Collier County, a wealthy, majority-Republican corner of the state that’s home to white-sand beaches and the western stretch of the Everglades.

The executive order, originally signed by the Republican governor in 2023 and extended since then, accelerated the project, allowing the state to seize county-owned land and evade rules in what critics have called an abuse of power. The order granted the state sweeping authority to suspend “any statute, rule or order” seen as slowing the response to the immigration “emergency.”

A representative for DeSantis did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Known as the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, the airstrip is about 45 miles (72 kilometers) west of downtown Miami. It is located within Collier County but is owned and managed by neighboring Miami-Dade County. The AP asked for similar records from Miami-Dade County, which is still processing the request.

To DeSantis and other state officials, building the facility in the remote Everglades and naming it after a notorious federal prison were meant as deterrents. It’s another sign of how President Donald Trump’s administration and his allies are relying on scare tactics to pressure people who are in the country illegally to leave.

Detention center in the Everglades? ‘Never heard of that’

Collier County Commissioner Rick LoCastro apparently first heard about the proposal after a concerned resident in another county sent him an email on June 21.

“A citizen is asking about a proposed ‘detention center’ in the Everglades?” LoCastro wrote to County Manager Amy Patterson and other staff. “Never heard of that … Am I missing something?”

“I am unaware of any land use petitions that are proposing a detention center in the Everglades. I’ll check with my intake team, but I don’t believe any such proposal has been received by Zoning,” replied the county’s planning and zoning director, Michael Bosi.

Environmental groups have since filed a federal lawsuit, arguing that the state illegally bypassed federal and state laws in building the facility.

In fact, LoCastro was included on a June 21 email from state officials announcing their intention to buy the airfield. LoCastro sits on the county’s governing board but does not lead it, and his district does not include the airstrip. He forwarded the message to the county attorney, saying, “Not sure why they would send this to me?”

In the email, Kevin Guthrie, the head of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, which built the detention center, said the state intended to “work collaboratively” with the counties. The message referenced the executive order on illegal immigration, but it did not specify how the state wanted to use the site, other than for “future emergency response, aviation logistics, and staging operations.”

The next day, Collier County’s emergency management director, Dan Summers, wrote up a briefing for the county manager and other local officials, including some notes about the “rumor” he had heard about plans for an immigration detention facility at the airfield.

Summers knew the place well, he said, after doing a detailed site survey a few years ago.

“The infrastructure is — well, nothing much but a few equipment barns and a mobile home office … (wet and mosquito-infested),” Summers wrote.

FDEM told Summers that while the agency had surveyed the airstrip, “NO mobilization or action plans are being executed at this time” and all activity was “investigatory,” Summers wrote.

Emergency director said lack of information was ‘not cool’

By June 23, Summers was racing to prepare a presentation for a meeting of the board of county commissioners the next day. He shot off an email to FDEM Director Kevin Guthrie seeking confirmation of basic facts about the airfield and the plans for the detention facility, which Summers understood to be “conceptual” and in “discussion or investigatory stages only.”

“Is it in the plans or is there an actual operation set to open?” Summers asked. “Rumor is operational today… ???”

In fact, the agency was already “on site with our vendors,” coordinating construction of the site, FDEM bureau chief Ian Guidicelli responded.

“Not cool! That’s not what was relayed to me last week or over the weekend,” Summers responded, adding that he would have “egg on my face” with the Collier County Sheriff’s Office and Board of County Commissioners. “It’s a Collier County site. I am on your team, how about the courtesy of some coordination?”

On the evening of June 23, FDEM officially notified Miami-Dade County it was seizing the county-owned land to build the detention center, under emergency powers granted by the executive order.

Plans for the facility sparked concerns among first responders in Collier County, who questioned which agency would be responsible if an emergency should strike the site.

Discussions on the issue grew tense at times. Local Fire Chief Chris Wolfe wrote to the county’s chief of emergency medical services and other officials on June 25: “I am not attempting to argue with you, more simply seeking how we are going to prepare for this that is clearly within the jurisdiction of Collier County.”

‘Not our circus, not our monkeys’

Summers, the emergency management director, repeatedly reached out to FDEM for guidance, trying to “eliminate some of the confusion” around the site.

As he and other county officials waited for details from Tallahassee, they turned to local news outlets for information, sharing links to stories among themselves.

“Keep them coming,” Summers wrote to county Communications Director John Mullins in response to one news article, “since [it’s] crickets from Tally at this point.”

Hoping to manage any blowback to the county’s tourism industry, local officials kept close tabs on media coverage of the facility, watching as the news spread rapidly from local newspapers in southwest Florida to national outlets such as the Washington Post and the New York Times and international news sites as far away as the U.K., Germany and Switzerland.

As questions from reporters and complaints from concerned residents streamed in, local officials lined up legal documentation to show the airfield was not their responsibility.

In an email chain labeled, “Not our circus, not our monkeys…,” County Attorney Jeffrey Klatzkow wrote to the county manager, “My view is we have no interest in this airport parcel, which was acquired by eminent domain by Dade County in 1968.”

Meanwhile, construction at the site plowed ahead, with trucks arriving around the clock carrying portable toilets, asphalt and construction materials. Among the companies that snagged multimillion-dollar contracts for the work were those whose owners donated generously to DeSantis and other Republicans.

On July 1, just 10 days after Collier County first got wind of the plans, the state officially opened the facility, welcoming DeSantis, Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other state and national officials for a tour.

A county emergency management staffer fired off an email to Summers, asking to be included on any site visit to the facility.

“Absolutely,” Summers replied. “After the President’s visit and some of the chaos on-site settles-in, we will get you all down there…”

Payne writes for the Associated Press.

Chef John Torode was reportedly axed from MasterChef yesterday after BBC boss Tim Davie said no star was bigger than the show – and it’s now emerged how John found out

Masterchef’s John Torode was left in shock yesterday after he found out he had been unceremoniously dropped from the popular cooking series, having discovered his fate on the BBC website.

The unexpected ousting followed comments from BBC boss Tim Davie, who stated that no presenter is bigger than the show itself, as reported by The Sun.

The famed cook, aged 59, was reportedly devastated when the BBC and production company Banijay confirmed his sudden exit amid allegations of racist language, coming in the wake of the explosive Gregg Wallace scandal.

An insider disclosed:

“John had no idea. He was blindsided.”

In a remarkable turn of events, it emerged that the Aussie chef’s representative was given a mere 11 minutes’ heads-up before the news was made public, reports the Express.

An source shared:

“John’s agent received a call 11 minutes before the statements went out and hadn’t had a chance to call him.

“He read about it on the BBC News website. Obviously he’s heartbroken.

“He feels he’s been made a scapegoat off the back of the Gregg Wallace report.”

Despite the controversy, Torode took to Instagram with a resolute message: “Although I haven’t heard from anyone at the BBC or Banijay – I am seeing and reading that I’ve been ‘sacked’ from MasterChef and I repeat that I have no recollection of what I’m accused of.

“I have loved every minute working on MasterChef, but it’s time to pass the cutlery to someone else.”

The shocking report into the conduct of MasterChef co-host Gregg Wallace, 60, validated an astonishing 45 out of 83 complaints dating from 2005 to 2024, culminating in his own spectacular downfall.

As we disclosed yesterday, BBC executives had insisted at the weekend that Torode step down, alleging he was grappling with mental health problems. He declined to do so.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested two women on Tuesday outside a West L.A. courthouse after a hearing in a local criminal case, marking the first instance in recent weeks of the Trump administration using a tactic that has drawn condemnation from the legal community.

Adriana Bernal, 37, was detained by ICE agents after appearing in the Airport Courthouse on La Cienega Boulevard late Tuesday morning, according to Jennifer Cheng, public information officer for the L.A. County Alternate Public Defender’s Office.

Video from the scene shows law enforcement agents, most in all black clothing, leading a woman toward a black truck outside the courthouse with tinted windows as one onlooker screams, “Oh my god, oh my god,” repeatedly. The agents had previously been waiting in the 3rd floor courtroom where Bernal and two other defendants were scheduled to appear, according to Cheng.

“Our client walked out of the courtroom and was followed by these individuals. Once our client was outside the building, these individuals (who were not in any uniform), handcuffed her, put her into dark a colored SUV and drove away,” Cheng said in an e-mail to The Times. “We were absolutely blindsided by what happened. These purported ICE agents detained our client without notice or explanation. We received no advance communication, no opportunity to advise our client, and no information.”

Advocates, defense attorneys and even some prosecutors have long sounded the alarm about the problems that could arise from ICE using state criminal courts as staging grounds for federal immigration enforcement. When ICE engaged in similar behavior across California, Oregon, New Mexico and Colorado in 2017, during Trump’s first term in office, prosecutors in some states reported having to drop cases because undocumented immigrants would no longer serve as witnesses.

An ICE spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

L.A. County’s Presiding Judge Sergio C. Tapia II said the courts did not receive advance notice of the arrest operation and confirmed ICE had not taken enforcement actions inside county courthouses yet this year.

“Federal immigration enforcement activities inside courthouses disrupt court operations, breach public trust, and compromise the Court’s constitutional role as a neutral venue for the peaceful resolution of disputes,” Tapia said in a statement. “These actions create a chilling effect, silencing victims, deterring witnesses, discouraging community members from seeking protection and deterring parties from being held accountable for their crimes or participating in legal proceedings critical to the rule of law.”

Bernal was slated to appear for an early disposition hearing in a case where she and two other defendants were charged with organized retail theft, grand theft and possession of burglary tools, according to court records.

One of Bernal’s co-defendants in the case was also detained by ICE agents, according to two sources with knowledge of the case, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Cheng said the alternate public defender’s office is “looking into whether local law enforcement or members of the District Attorney’s Office played a role in what happened,” though she admitted to having no evidence to support the idea that prosecutors tipped off ICE.

L.A. County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman said his office had no advance notice of ICE’s actions and would not notify federal officials about the immigration status of anyone they are prosecuting.

“As a general proposition, I don’t want anyone deported until I’ve got them sentenced. And if they’re sentence is jail or state prison I want them to serve their sentence,” he said in an interview. “That is the punishment they receive for committing crimes in my county. It doesn’t help that objective to get them through the criminal justice system, get them punished in our system, by having them deported before they’re done with what’s going on here.”

Hochman described the defendants in the case as part of broader organized retail theft “organization” with members from South America.

While ICE once directed its agents to avoid making arrests in so-called “sensitive locations” including schools, places of worship and hospitals, Trump shifted that policy shortly after he took office, rescinding the 2011 Obama-era memo that restricted such actions.

ICE officials have previously claimed courthouse arrests were necessary to keep agents safe from dangerous criminals — since those entering state courts must pass through metal detectors and are presumably unarmed.

But a recent Times study of statistics collected by the Deportation Data Project shows that 69% of the approximately 722 people arrested during the first week of the Trump Administration’s California immigration raids had no criminal record.

The California Supreme Court previously rebuked the federal government during Trump’s last presidency for “stalking courthouses” and using the justice system as “bait,” effectively punishing undocumented people for showing up to court.

In recent months, the Trump administration has been routinely arresting people at regular immigration hearings and federal court appearances.

Cheng said Tuesday’s actions by ICE were a dangerous escalation by the agency in Los Angeles.

“We have seen throughout our community how ICE agents often detain and seize people simply because they fit a particular profile, without any regard to the person’s immigration status, or the status of any immigration process that a person is currently going through,” she wrote. “When there is widespread fear that ICE is going to snatch you if you go to court – whether you are charged with a crime, a victim of crime, or a witness to crime, people will stop going to court.”

Times Staff Writer Andrea Castillo contributed to this report.