During a House Administration Committee hearing on Tuesday, Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) spoke about contracts awarded to companies operating an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in the Everglades known as Alligator Alcatraz.
00:00Well, good. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair, and thank you so much to our witnesses for being here.
00:04You know, our witnesses have made the point that the bid protest process can help make the federal contracting process fair and transparent, which is obviously very important.
00:13Unfortunately, there's been a large absence of fairness and transparency, especially with the current administration,
00:20and I really want to focus in and to talk about what the absence of fairness and transparency would mean for the true funders and true clients of these contracts,
00:29which are our constituents and the American people.
00:32Professor Huygens, are there examples from outside the United States where businesses lack the ability to challenge government contracting decisions?
00:42Yes, sir. The most profound example was in South Africa under Jacob Zuma.
00:46When Jacob Zuma and the Gupta family were able to seize control of actually a small part of the overall procurement system in South Africa,
00:54but they delegitimized the entire young democracy in South Africa as a result.
00:59A lot of what you see from President Ramaphosa now in his response, his aggressive response against corruption,
01:06is because of what they did, what Jacob Zuma and the Gupta family did in procurement.
01:10So when a procurement system collapses, it affects the entire government.
01:16What has that meant for the results of those contracts and the people of those countries return on the investment?
01:22What has meant is that for South Africa, for example, is now revamping their procurement system dramatically.
01:29I think in our own country here, as we're moving forward, I mean, it will be important for there to be, as you say,
01:37as much transparency as possible in order to keep so concrete example,
01:42and something that I know that's very important to you is the detention centers that are likely to be before.
01:47That's the detention centers have been a classic example of private capital being used aggressively by the federal government to put facilities in place.
01:56And if those detention facilities are not procured using transparent processes that set standards as to what the detention facility should look like,
02:08based on the contracts, then there could be very serious ramifications across the government.
02:14Yeah, I'm really happy you brought this up, because it's something I wanted to talk about.
02:17You know, about a week and a half ago, I did a tour of this, what I would call an internment camp,
02:23but it's an immigrant detention center in the middle of the Everglades in the state of Florida,
02:28being operated by the Florida Division of Emergency Management,
02:32which is tasked with keeping our people safe during a hurricane.
02:36And they're spending about $450 million of the $500 million cap that they can spend to prepare for hurricanes on the detention center.
02:45So, hurricane comes up in the Gulf tomorrow, barreling towards Florida.
02:49They have to go back to the legislature and spend time doing that instead of taking care of the people of our state.
02:53But that's a whole other thing.
02:54I want to talk about the lack of transparency and fairness we're seeing in this,
02:58because I don't want to see this exported across the country.
03:01The most recent example is this Everglades facility.
03:05Here's some examples.
03:06CDR Health, which has donated about $4 million to Republicans in Florida,
03:11and over half a million dollars to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis a few months ago,
03:16won a $17.5 million contract for this specific facility.
03:22IRG Global, which has given $400,000 to Governor DeSantis and the GOP,
03:26including $10,000 to the Florida GOP just hours before they were awarded a $1.1 million contract
03:34for this immigrant detention center.
03:37They're running the camp operations, and they got another $5 million contract later in a few weeks after that.
03:44None of these businesses hired to build, staff, and run this immigrant detention facility
03:50have any prior experience with immigrant detention centers
03:55and no prior experience with anything in corrections facilities or anything around that.
04:01This is costing us eight to ten times what it usually costs to house a typical inmate.
04:07And I would like to enter into the record of unanimous consent on this article from the Orlando Sentinel.
04:13Without objection.
04:15Yeah, it's Florida's disaster pipeline funnels millions to politically connected contractors.
04:19Look, I mean, and I don't care what party you're in.
04:24This is something we should all, and I don't care what your politics are.
04:26This is something that should worry all of us.
04:29When in the state of Florida, the money set aside to protect us from hurricanes
04:33is being used for a, what I would say is a politically motivated promise in this mass deportation thing.
04:40But not even just that, but the money that's being awarded to these contractors
04:44is not being done in a transparent way.
04:46It's completely bypassing the typical process you go to to have a contractor in the state of Florida.
04:53And then it's seemingly going to people who've donated millions and millions of dollars
04:57to the guy making the decisions.
04:59And so this is something that should be on the mind of all people across the country,
05:02and everybody for Floridian, especially as we talk about procurement
05:05and as we talk about third-party contractors.
