Jim DeFede, reporter with CBS News Miami, ripped Florida Attorney General James Uthmeieir a new one last week as “Alligator Alcatraz” shut down — and Uthmeier was nowhere to be found.

It was Uthmeier, DeFede reminded us, who came up with the idea of the Everglades detention center, basing a billion-dollar policy decision on a “cool” name designed to pique President Trump’s interest. Uthmeier saw no problem building a prison in the middle of the Everglades, where absolutely everything had to be trucked in and out, where the cost — fiscal and environmental — was destined to be sky-high.

Indeed, CBS News Miami pegged the daily cost of keeping a detainee at Alligator Alcatraz at $3,571 per day — up to 21 times more than the national average.

“And it’s worth remembering that the person responsible for this is Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier,” reported DeFede.

But Uthmeier, he noted, no longer speaks of “Alligator Alcatraz”; he wouldn’t talk to DeFede about it. He wasn’t at the press conference announcing the closure. Why, it’s like Uthmeier wants us to forget.

Fat chance.

While Uthmeier wouldn’t talk to DeFede, his opponent in the November election, Democrat Jose Javier Rodriguez, did. Rodriguez called the Everglades detention center “an embarrassment, a boodoggle, an abuse. And he called Uthmeier “the most corrupt attorney general we ever had.”

And “Alligator Alcatraz” will be his legacy — whether he wants to claim it or not.