Kevin Guthrie had a blunt message when he spoke at the opening of “Alligator Alcatraz” in July: “Florida is and always will be a law-and-order state.”
But Guthrie, whose agency built the new immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades, doesn’t work in immigration or law enforcement. He runs the Florida Division of Emergency Management and has vied to lead the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Guthrie’s central role in constructing and operating the facility has provoked backlash from emergency managers who fear it will scare away immigrants — and potentially Hispanic citizens — from seeking help in a disaster. Some say Guthrie is violating a professional code of conduct by helping detain people.
“A detention center for immigrants is not something emergency managers should build,” said Sarah Miller, who formerly coordinated emergency management for 16 cities near Seattle. “We do not do things intentionally to harm people.”
Florida DEM spokesperson Stephanie Hartman said in response to the criticism, “illegal immigration is a national emergency.”
“In Florida under Governor [Ron] DeSantis, we are leading the nation on immigration enforcement and will continue to detain and deport illegal aliens from our country,” Hartman said in an email.
Alligator Alcatraz is one of several alliteratively named detention centers that states have created to handle the surge in immigration arrests under President Donald Trump, who toured the facility the day it opened, spoke at length and introduced Guthrie.
In August, the “Speedway Slammer” opened in Indiana, followed by the “Deportation Depot” in northern Florida, the “Cornhusker Clink” in Nebraska and the “Louisiana Lockup” at the notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary.
Those four facilities operate at existing state prisons and are run by state corrections departments.
Alligator Alcatraz, however, is operated by Florida DEM, according to a recent Justice Department court filing. The facility faces legal challenges over the lack of an environmental review for the site and the alleged blocking of meetings between detainees and legal counsel.
“The problem I see with this for our profession is that as emergency managers, particularly if you serve at the local level or at the state level, you have a duty to serve everyone in your community — not just white people, not just people perceived to be citizens,” said Edie Schaffer, a former emergency planning manager for San Francisco.
“It impacts our ability to do our jobs as emergency managers if people can’t trust us. If we order evacuations, and people don’t trust us, … they are automatically in greater danger,” Schaffer added.
Emerging controversy
Guthrie is one of the nation’s most prominent emergency managers and, like many colleagues, has served under both Democrats and Republicans.
Former President Barack Obama gave Guthrie a Presidential Call to Service award while Guthrie was running a county emergency management department in Florida. He later served as deputy director of Florida DEM under then-Director Jared Moskowitz, a former Democratic state legislator hired by DeSantis. When Moskowitz left in 2021 to run for Congress, DeSantis replaced him with Guthrie.
Moskowitz, now a U.S. lawmaker who represents a district in South Florida, did not respond to a request for comment about Guthrie.
The controversy over Guthrie’s connection to Alligator Alcatraz heightened last month when Schaffer and Miller led a petition urging the International Association of Emergency Managers to revoke the credentials of officials who are “depriving members in their community of their rights.”
The petition did not name Guthrie. But Miller, a former association board member and region president, separately notified the professional association that Guthrie was falsely claiming to have an association certification.
The association told Guthrie to stop claiming he had its Certified Emergency Manager certification, which had expired. Guthrie complied, removing the “CEM” credential from his LinkedIn profile.
But Guthrie’s messaging in recent months continues to garner concern from some in the emergency management community.
“From Day 1,” Guthrie said at the Aug. 14 opening of Deportation Depot, “Gov. Desantis has sent a clear message, and that is: Illegal immigration has no place in the state of Florida.”
During a July 14 television interview with Fox News host Jesse Waters, Guthrie mocked Democratic U.S. House members whom he had led on a tour of Alligator Alcatraz and posted a video of the exchange on his official state X account.
“Were some of these politicians trying to create controversy? Were they, like, you know, making things up or exaggerating?” Waters asked.
“Absolutely,” Guthrie replied before ridiculing complaints by lawmakers, including one who he said raised concerns about “a gray turkey sandwich” being served to detainees and then asked if detainees could get seconds. “So, it’s either gray and too nasty to eat, or it’s OK and ‘Can I get a second helping?’”
Guthrie’s public comments violate the nonpartisan spirit of emergency management, critics said, and raise alarms about how he might run FEMA. Guthrie interviewed at the White House for the job shortly after Trump took office.
In his first term, Trump followed the nonpartisan tradition, naming as FEMA Administrator Peter Gaynor, who had run Rhode Island’s emergency management agency under Gov. Gina Raimondo, a Democrat who became Commerce secretary in the Biden administration.
Trump has not nominated a FEMA administrator since taking office again in January. He appointed Guthrie to a 13-member FEMA review panel that will recommend potential overhauls of the agency in November.
“If the guy who’s all about law and order is in charge of emergency management at the federal level, I’m really afraid that emergency management at the federal level becomes law and order,” Miller said. “It is very much at odds with the stated mission and purpose of FEMA.”
Immigration as a ‘major disaster’
Trump’s intensification of immigration enforcement has renewed longstanding concerns among emergency managers that their law enforcement links undermine the field’s humanitarian impulse.
FEMA says on its website that its “mission is helping people before, during and after disasters.” But the agency has long battled conspiracy theories about “FEMA camps” to detain citizens, driven in part by the agency’s link to fellow Department of Homeland Security agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“FEMA always struggled with having the DHS logo next to it,” said a former senior FEMA official granted anonymity to speak freely.
Former President Joe Biden sought to avoid immigration enforcement in disaster areas as a way of encouraging people to seek emergency help. Yet the Biden administration also put FEMA in charge of providing shelter for unauthorized immigrants awaiting legal processing.
“When emergency managers were dealing with a surge [of migrants] in interior cities, that’s a role emergency managers can play,” the former FEMA official said.
“The whole thing with Alligator Alcatraz is a little different,” the official added. “Emergency management has a role in the humanitarian side of migration, but I don’t think they have a role in the enforcement because emergency managers are not law enforcement.”
Craig Fugate, who ran the Florida Division of Emergency Management before leading FEMA in the Obama administration, recalled that when then-Cuban President Fidel Castro appeared to be near death, the state agency prepared for a potential flood of immigrants.
“We were tasked with having the capacity to run mass care. If they got here, could we provide basic care, food, clothing,” Fugate said. Florida DEM was tapped because it had the ability to build base camps at disaster sites to support recovery operations.
Fugate said he believes DeSantis ordered Florida DEM to build Alligator Alcatraz “because they had the capacity to do it.”
An executive order that DeSantis issued in January 2023 says unauthorized immigration to Florida “is likely to constitute a major disaster” and made the head of Florida DEM the state coordinating officer “for the duration of this emergency.”
“If you’re told to do something by your boss, what are you going to do?” Fugate said in defense of Guthrie.
At a crossroads?
Miller and Schaffer got about 60 signatures on their petition, which was also led by Nathaniel Matthews-Trigg, director of climate and disaster resilience for an international disaster group called Americares.
The International Association of Emergency Managers, with 6,000 members, is one of the nation’s leading voices on emergency management and was created to professionalize the field. It offers certifications to people who complete coursework and demonstrate expertise.
The petition asked the association to condemn “the participation of emergency managers in detaining persons perceived to be immigrants.”
It also asked the association to update its code of conduct “to make it clear that emergency managers who participate in an official capacity in depriving members of their community of their rights violate the Code and may be disciplined as a result.”
Some emergency managers defended Guthrie on a LinkedIn chat about the petition.
“Of course FDEM helped build it, they work for the executive branch of the state,” longtime emergency manager Sean Fay wrote.
“How many Nazi or SS soldiers said they were just doing their jobs?” replied Seattle Emergency Management Director Curry Mayer.
As the petition was circulating, Carrie Speranza, head of the association’s U.S. division, issued a statement saying the organization “is not the judge and jury of the emergency management community.”
“Emergency management exists to safeguard lives and property, protect communities,” Speranza added. “Above all, emergency managers should do what they can to ensure emergency management remains a discipline rooted in compassion and service to all people as we work to build safer communities.”
Gratified by the statement, Miller and Schaffer dropped the petition. But they remain concerned about emergency management under Trump.
“We find ourselves at a crossroads as a profession,” Schaffer said. “Our profession is under siege, and it has been since the Trump administration took office in January.”
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly described Sarah Miller’s employment.
