Florida mistakenly released two Deportation Depot detainees, then returned them to custody

Two immigration detainees held at Florida's Deportation Depot in Baker County were released by mistake over the weekend and later caught and returned to the state-run facility, the Florida Division of Emergency Management confirmed this week. The agency blamed an administrative error that allowed both people to be bonded out, said there is no ongoing threat to the public and said it is reviewing what went wrong.

The episode, first reported by the News Service of Florida on Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2026, involves the detention center the state opened in September 2025 inside the former Baker Correctional Institution in Sanderson, about 40 miles west of Jacksonville.

What the state said happened

In a statement to the News Service of Florida, the Division of Emergency Management said an administrative error resulted in the two detainees being bonded out. The agency did not say who posted bond, which office processed the release or how long the two were out of custody before they were found.

"Both individuals were quickly located and returned to custody," division spokeswoman Stephanie Hartman said. "There is no ongoing threat to the public."

Hartman said the incident is under internal review. "The matter is being reviewed to ensure accountability and prevent similar incidents," she said.

It is not known whether either detainee had a criminal record, and the state has not released their names or nationalities. Officials also have not said where the two were located or which agency took them back into custody.

Who runs Deportation Depot

The Division of Emergency Management, which sits within Gov. Ron DeSantis' executive office, is the agency in charge of the state's immigration detention facilities. Deportation Depot houses detained immigrants who are in the country illegally until they are transferred into the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The facility is separate from the Baker County Detention Center, a nearby jail where ICE holds detainees. Deportation Depot is a state operation.

Day-to-day staffing is contracted out. According to state documents cited by the News Service of Florida, Florida has a contract worth up to $101 million with a company called GEO|CDR Baker for administrative staffing, correctional officers, intake staffing and health and medical personnel at the site. As of Sept. 22, the state had paid the company about $32 million under that contract, according to the Florida Accountability Contract Tracking System.

State business records show GEO|CDR Baker was created in late August 2025. It is headed by executives from The GEO Group, the largest private detention contractor in the country, and CDR Health Care.

How the facility came to be

Florida opened Deportation Depot as its second state-run immigration detention site in early September 2025. The first detainees arrived on Sept. 2, and the governor's office told Fox News that 117 people were being held there by that Friday. At the time, the governor's office put the facility's capacity at 1,500 detainees, while an ICE spokesperson said around the opening that it could house up to 2,000 people. It currently holds about 1,000 detainees, according to the News Service of Florida.

Attorney General James Uthmeier described the site at its opening as a supplement to the state's first facility, the tent-based detention center in the Everglades known as Alligator Alcatraz. "We want to fill them up," Uthmeier told Fox News then, noting that the Baker County site was a pre-existing state prison that was no longer in use and was already built to hold large numbers of people.

The state has described the site as a short-term stop rather than a long-term jail. At a news conference outside Deportation Depot in January 2026, DeSantis said the facility had contributed to 93 deportation flights carrying nearly 3,000 detainees in its first four months, according to Action News Jax. "Our goal is we want people here as little as possible. The goal is not to create a long-term facility, and that's not the function," DeSantis said then.

Alligator Alcatraz closed in June 2026, but Deportation Depot continues to operate. The state has assisted in the arrests of 27,898 immigrants in Florida who were in the country illegally as of Oct. 14, according to state figures cited by the News Service of Florida.

An agency stretched across two missions

The release error comes at a demanding moment for the Division of Emergency Management, which is also Florida's lead agency for hurricane response. Hurricane Isaias made landfall in Okaloosa County on Friday, Oct. 9, as a Category 2 storm with sustained winds of 120 mph. The storm knocked out power to nearly 450,000 homes and businesses in Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa and Bay counties, and as of Wednesday afternoon, all but 11,376 customers had their power back.

The agency's finances have also drawn attention. In September, the division issued a report projecting a worst-case deficit of $1.5 billion in the state's Emergency Preparedness and Response Fund by the end of the 2026-2027 fiscal year if Florida is hit by two natural disasters. That projection assumed full federal reimbursement for the state's immigration enforcement costs and an infusion of $500 million from the Legislature, according to the report as described by the News Service of Florida. The report also said the division had received only $84.6 million of a promised $608 million in federal grant money.

Why it matters for Northeast Florida

Baker County is a rural county on the western edge of the Jacksonville area. The state's assurance that the two detainees were found quickly is the only public account of the incident so far. The agency has not described what safeguards failed or whether a contractor or state employee processed the release.

Those answers matter because the state, not the federal government, is responsible for custody at Deportation Depot until detainees are handed to ICE. A paperwork error that leads to a bond release at a state-run site raises questions about how the state checks a detainee's status before letting anyone leave, and how quickly it learns of a mistake.

What's next

The Division of Emergency Management says its review is meant to establish accountability and prevent a repeat. The agency has not said when the review will be finished or whether its findings will be made public.

According to the state, both detainees are back in custody. Detainees at Deportation Depot are held there until they are transferred to ICE.