DeSantis says Alligator Alcatraz ‘fulfilled’ its role as he closes it after 1 year

Florida Politics admin June 25, 2026 0 Comments

DeSantis says Alligator Alcatraz ‘fulfilled’ its role as he closes it after 1 year

After a year filled with lawsuits, torture allegations and criticism over the use of taxpayer money, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced on Thursday the closure of the Everglades detention center known as Alligator Alcatraz.

“Alligator Alcatraz fulfilled the role it was designed to serve,” DeSantis said at a press conference Thursday at the facility that has already been emptied of federal detainees.

In his remarks, DeSantis ticked off serious criminal offenses, including rape and murder, for about a dozen of the more than 20,000 immigration offenders held there and then deported by the federal government. “There’s no question this mission has made the state of Florida safer.”

The temporary detention camp — created on a remote airport Florida seized from Miami-Dade County last summer under the governor’s emergency powers — quickly was dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” by DeSantis, a play on the dangers that detainees might face if they strayed into the swampy waters surrounding the property.

Critics slammed the operation as a pricey publicity stunt and an inhumane way to house people facing deportation. Environmental groups sued, saying Florida violated environmental regulations in rushing construction of a camp surrounded by the federal Big Cypress Preserve.

DeSantis’s announcement of the closure comes after almost two months of the state and federal governments not being forthcoming about whether detainees still remained at the Everglades facility and when it planned to close the tent camp, even after signaling that discussions about its closure had begun as early as March.

In his remarks, DeSantis did not lay out a timetable for when Florida would turn the airfield back to Miami-Dade. He told reporters he expected the facility to be formally closed within two weeks. Early Thursday, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said she wanted the county-owned property — including about 17,000 acres of wetlands — turned over to the National Park Service to help Everglades restoration.

DeSantis was joined by Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar. He used his time to defend Trump’s crackdown on both illegal immigration and on people holding legal visas that were revoked by the president’s administration.

“The most secure border in the history of this nation was achieved under President Trump,” Homan said.

From the start, the DeSantis administration faced criticism from environmental conservation groups, who argued in federal court that increased activity in the area because of the facility’s operations caused irreparable harm to the surrounding Everglades wetlands. The groups filed a lawsuit against the state and federal governments, accusing them of failing to comply with federal environmental regulations when building the facility, which ran on numerous diesel generators and required daily sewage disposal.

The state has rejected accusations of environmental harm and said the airport was already developed, with activity occurring before the tent detention camp was erected.

This story will be updated.

This story was originally published June 25, 2026 at 12:02 PM.