Kate Payne/Associated Press/Report for America

Over the last five months, Florida law enforcement officials have arrested more than 6,000 people suspected of being in the country illegally, a U.S. Border Patrol official announced Friday. The announcement comes as the state continues its aggressive approach to help carry out President Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda. Florida's total is in comparison to the more than 5,000 arrests carried out over a three-month period in the Los Angeles area, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

A top Florida official says the controversial state-run immigration detention facility in the Everglades will likely be empty in a matter of days, even as Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis' administration and the federal government fight a judge's order to shutter the facility dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” by late October. That's according to an email exchange shared with The Associated Press.

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis' administration is preparing to open a second immigration detention facility at a state prison in north Florida, as a federal judge decides the fate of the state's holding center for immigrants at an isolated airstrip in the Florida Everglades dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz." DeSantis announced Thursday that the new facility is to be built at the Baker Correctional Institution, a state prison about 43 miles west of Jacksonville, and is expected to house 1,300 immigration detention beds, though that capacity could be expanded to 2,000, state officials said.