BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Gov. Ron DeSantis announced on August 14 that Baker Correctional Institution will replace Camp Blanding as a future site for an immigration detention facility.
The governor stated that limited airport runway capacity at the Clay County National Guard training facility was one factor in relocating the detention facility to Baker County.
DeSantis noted that Lake City’s Gateway Airport is 15 minutes from Baker Correctional. He said any immigration detention facility must be close to an airport capable of handling large planes departing for immigrants’ home countries.
“The reality is,” DeSantis said, “although Blanding does have some air access, we were not going to be able to run the big flights out of that airstrip.”
Another factor was the excess capacity at Baker Correctional Institution. The Department of Corrections mixed-security-level facility near Sanderson was closed in 2021 due to staffing shortages. New River Correctional in Bradford County was closed at the same time.
“You talk about already-made infrastructure,” DeSantis said. “This was something that was very appealing from that perspective, because it would require us to do a lot less in standing up than we would at Blanding and far less than we had to do at Alligator Alcatraz.”
