Company Behind “Alligator Alcatraz” Vies for Contract to Rebuild Gaza

At least a dozen people have died in Gaza as winter storms batter displaced Palestinians forced to shelter in makeshift tents among the rubble of collapsing buildings severely damaged by Israeli bombing. That rubble is being eyed by U.S.-based contractors, who are already vying for lucrative contracts to rebuild Gaza under the Trump-backed ceasefire deal. “People are lining up and treating this the way they treated reconstruction in Iraq,” says Aram Roston, whose latest investigation for The Guardian US looks at how the company behind the notorious Florida immigration detention jail nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz” has been involved in rebuilding plans spearheaded by Trump’s so-called Board of Peace.

Roston also discusses his reporting on the CIA’s involvement in U.S. military strikes on boats in the Caribbean. “It plays this key role in picking the targets that are chosen by the military for destruction.”

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

We go now to a new investigation published by The Guardian. It’s headlined “’They’re trying to get rich off it’: US contractors vie to rebuild Gaza, with ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ team in the lead.” We are joined now by the co-author of the piece, the Emmy Award-winning investigative journalist Aram Roston, senior political enterprise reporter for The Guardian US.

Aram, welcome back to Democracy Now! Explain exactly what’s happening. Who is this team that built “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida, and what do they have to do with Gaza?

ARAM ROSTON: Thank you, Amy.

So, Cate Brown, my colleague, and I wrote this story. What we looked at is the budding plans to rebuild Gaza, if in fact this U.N.-approved plan of Trump’s moved forward. And what we found is really two things. One is there’s a effort by White House officials to sort of get ahead of this plan for a, quote, “Board of Peace” run by Trump that would rebuild Gaza. Two of the staffers on it are ex-DOGE. They used to work on the Elon Musk team. And they’re the ones sort of talking to contractors and trying to plot out things, although there’s no authority to issue contracts yet.

We found that the lead, it seemed, at this point when we wrote the story, was a company that was involved in building this — what’s nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz.” Really, it’s the South Florida Detention Center, run by the state of Florida to house immigrant detainees in really almost — in conditions that are considered quite inhumane, in this sort of swamp, where it’s incredibly hot, and in a sort of tent city. So, this company, which was, you know, in the — it’s run by a very politically connected entrepreneur named Matt Michelsen. It seemed to be in the lead in this, in this project, to handle logistics, which is the main thing at this point in — that will be necessary in Gaza.

I will say, by the way, when we spoke to this entrepreneur, as soon as we talked to him, on Friday, as we put in the story, he announced to us — he said he hadn’t told his staff this — he was pulling out of the effort immediately. So, it was a little confusing to us, that as soon as we talked to him, he said our questions had pushed him to pull out of the entire Gaza effort for now.

AMY GOODMAN: What’s the name of the company?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Aram, you mentioned these two officials who are leading the task force. Could you talk about them and the planning document that you found? One of them, Adam Hoffman, is a 25-year-old Princeton graduate?

ARAM ROSTON: So, the name of the company, first, I should add, was called Gothams LLC. It was founded in 2019, and quickly it became — it got contracts worth hundreds and hundreds of millions in Texas, and then Florida, it got contracts, in the state level, really. And it was — its founder was donating large amounts to politicians in the state level.

And then, your question, Juan, about Adam Hoffman is really on point. Adam Hoffman is — he seems to be 25 years old. He was — he’s been a conservative activist and a pro- — you know, a writer who advocates positions that are very pro-Israel. And then he ended up at DOGE in March. He joined Elon Musk’s DOGE.

And we saw a number of things. We saw, you know, some — we reviewed some documents for planning for this logistics system to come. It hadn’t — you know, there’s no way they can actually contract it out yet legally, that we know of. It’s all informal. But there’s a slide deck for contractors to try to get them to come up, you know, with this system. They’ve already got prices per truck. Humanitarian trucks would pay $2,000 each. And commercial trucks would pay, I think it’s $12,000 each, to this company. And then we saw this bid prepared by this company, Gothams, submitting a sort of proposal. Again, it all seems to be informal, but it’s all in the hopes of whenever reconstruction really gets going and that money gets flowing, it seems they want it.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And you’re talking here about 2,000 or 12,000 per truckload?

ARAM ROSTON: That’s what’s in the documents we saw, yeah.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: So, that would be a phenomenal amount of money, if you’re talking about hundreds and hundreds of trucks coming in per day, wouldn’t it?

ARAM ROSTON: I mean, the math, as we did it, said $1.7 billion a year. And it seems to be for three — the one we saw was for three years. Now, we should — if you don’t mind my pointing out, the White House sort of got back to us, and they said, you know, sort of we misinterpreted, and it was all just planning. They’re not issuing contracts yet. But we wrote that in the story, that that’s the case. It’s not — there’s no formal legal way, that we know of, that contracts can be issued. It’s just people are lining up. And all these contractors told us, you know, people are all lining up for the spoils. They think this is a massive way — this is a massive amount of money. One businessman we talked to said people are lining up and treating this the way they treated reconstruction in Iraq, which you’ll remember was immensely profitable for people.

AMY GOODMAN: Aram, in last year, Trump’s son-in-law, former adviser Jared Kushner, weighed in on Israel’s war on Gaza, saying Israel should move Palestinians out of Gaza, which he said contains “very valuable waterfront property.” He made the remarks during an event hosted by the Middle East Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School.

JARED KUSHNER: And Gaza’s waterfront property, it could be very valuable to — if people would focus on kind of building up, you know, livelihoods. You think about all the money that’s gone into this tunnel network and into all the munitions, if that would have gone into education or innovation, what could have been done. And so, I think that it’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but I think, from Israel’s perspective, I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up. But I don’t think that Israel has stated that they don’t want the people to move back there afterwards.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that was Jared Kushner last year. I’m wondering if you can comment on this. And these contracts that you’ve been talking about can’t be issued until Trump’s so-called Board of Peace begins its operation in Gaza. Can you talk about the role of Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff, Aryeh Lightstone, who are leading Trump’s Gaza task force?

ARAM ROSTON: So, yeah, as you say, they’re leading the task force. Jared Kushner said that. It was extraordinary when he did. It’s unclear — he’s not saying that right now. He’s not promoting that right now. So, we don’t have any clue what the real — you know, there’s been — you know, the real plan there. Is it going to be these resorts or condos that they’re planning, on on top of what used to be housing for Palestinians? We don’t know what their actual plans are, and he hasn’t issued — there’s no public plan by the U.N.

What they are saying is there’s going to be — there’s this board, there’s this working group, this committee. Then there’s supposed to be, eventually, this Board of Peace, chaired by Trump. It’s unclear who’s going to be on it, but it’s going to be heads of state. And then, underneath that, there will be another committee or two, sort of, and there will be, purportedly, a Palestinian technocratic committee that will actually issue things. Nobody knows how, you know, land rights will work. Who will — if somebody ends up building condos on a part of Gaza, you know, who would be compensated for the loss of their land? Nobody knows any of this.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: [Aram], we have only about a minute left, but I wanted to ask you about another topic, an article you wrote about in October on the CIA playing a “most important part” in these Trump administration attacks on boats in the Caribbean. We’ve just had news that three more boats have been attacked by the United States, and eight people killed. What is the CIA’s involvement in this, in this series of attacks?

ARAM ROSTON: Well, what I reported back then was that the CIA is providing the most important part, because they’re providing the intelligence, picking which boats, and they pass the information on to the military, which does the strikes. The drones — we believe they’re drones that are launching these missiles, like Hellfires. The CIA is providing the information and what you’d call evidence, but it’s not evidence. It’s intelligence about where drugs are, how many people are on the boat, where it left, where it’s going to, and whether there’s been sort of radio traffic from it that they can use to, you know, triangulate what it’s doing. I think that’s why — or, the sources said it was the most important part of it, because it’s the intelligence. And the CIA, its name had — its role hadn’t been sort of described yet. It plays this key role in picking, you know, the targets that are chosen by the military for destruction.

AMY GOODMAN: Aram Roston, I want to thank you for being with us, Emmy Award-winning reporter. He writes for The Guardian US. We’ll link to your piece, “’They’re trying to get rich off it’: US contractors vie to rebuild Gaza, with ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ team in the lead.” Aram is also the author of the book The Man Who Pushed America to War: The Extraordinary Life, Adventures, and Obsessions of Ahmad Chalabi. That does it for our show. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, for another edition of Democracy Now!