TALLAHASSEE, Fla. _ No one noticed.
Five months ago, the federal government sent an advisory to Gov. Rick Scott and Florida members of Congress: It was reopening a shelter for "unaccompanied alien children" 35 miles south of Miami.
"There is no set date for UACs to arrive at the facility," a letter read, pledging "accountability and transparency for program operations."
The Homestead shelter, run by a private Florida contractor for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has become a flashpoint in an uproar over President Donald Trump's immigration policy. Hundreds of migrant children sent there went unnoticed until they were joined by dozens more torn from their parents at the border in recent weeks.
The outcry over child separation has revealed a disturbing bigger picture. America's immigration enforcement system is a complex patchwork involving multiple federal agencies, local sheriffs, nonprofits and, increasingly, politically influential corporations like Florida-based GEO Group.
The system exists in a bureaucratic netherworld. Neither Scott's office nor the Department of Children and Families provided a complete list of federal immigration facilities in Florida, because they said the immigrants are not in the state system.
Yet getting federal officials to provide details about the system is difficult _ and made more so by outsourcing. Most requests for information must go through a formal process that takes months or even years.
Florida's key role in the national detention system wasn't publicly known until news broke in mid-June that more than 1,000 children were housed in a dormlike former job training center in Homestead, including at least 70 kids who were taken from their families.
Politicians, mainly Democrats, rushed to the shelters and demanded action. Others, including the Republican governor, said they opposed child separation but have not taken much action, seeming to underscore the treacherous politics of immigration in an election year.
"It's a controversial and complicated issue," said Frank Sharry, executive director of immigration reform group America's Voice. "We're a country that is at war with itself over how we reconcile being a nation of immigrants and nation of laws. The 'keep 'em out, let them in' fight results in conflicting mandates and a lack of coherence."
