After ‘Alcatraz,’ environmentalists have a new target: the runway in the Everglades

Miami-Dade County admin July 3, 2026 0 Comments

After ‘Alcatraz,’ environmentalists have a new target: the runway in the Everglades

With the one-time immigration detention camp known as “Alligator Alcatraz” closed down, environmental groups say the time has come to turn the remote airport into an environmental preserve. That could include ripping up the jumbo runway that was the subject of a huge environmental fight decades ago.

Miami-Dade County owns the 17,000-acre expanse of wetlands that surrounds what’s officially known as the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, a sleepy airfield 45 miles west of Miami International Airport. Gov. Ron DeSantis seized the airport in the summer of 2025 for use as a temporary detention facility for immigration offenders awaiting deportation.

Last week, DeSantis traveled to an already cleared out “Alcatraz” and declared the operation concluded, prompting Miami-Dade to get ready to take back the airfield once the state formally relinquishes control of the site.

It’s not clear when that will happen, but there’s a push to block any future mobilization or development at the site by turning it into a nature preserve. That could mean dismantling the 10,500-foot runway the county installed there in the 1960s, before environmental groups — led by Marjory Stoneman Douglas — rose up to block what was supposed to be the country’s largest airport.

“Now that the detention center is closed to detainees, it is paramount that transparency and public input guide the next steps for this culturally and ecologically significant part of the Everglades,” Friends of the Everglades wrote in a letter Thursday to Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava. “This site was the target of harmful development a half-century ago, when the Everglades Jetport proposal threatened Big Cypress… And it stands to be harmed once more if back-room deals are allowed to dictate what comes after ‘Alligator Alcatraz.’”

The advocacy group presented Levine Cava with a plan for what’s next for the county airfield, which Levine Cava has already said she wants to see transferred to the National Park Service for preservation.

As part of the five-point plan outlined by the Friends of the Everglades, the group wants Miami-Dade to “evaluate removal” of the airfield’s runway in order to “advance Everglades restoration.”

Eve Samples, the group’s executive director, wrote in the letter that the study should analyze the “ecological impacts of the original 1969 runway” and “the costs and benefits of removing the runway and restoring the landscape.”

Levine Cava’s plan, announced in a June 25 memo and a follow-up letter to DeSantis, is silent on whether the runway should be removed as part of a preservation plan.

“The conclusion of detention operations presents an opportunity to return these lands to a purpose that reflects their environmental significance and advances our shared responsibility to preserve the Everglades for future generations,” the mayor wrote to DeSantis on June 29.

Before the state’s seizure, Miami-Dade operated the airport for quick landings and takeoffs for pilots needing the touchdowns for licensing purposes.

In her June 25 memo to county commissioners, Levine Cava said it didn’t make financial sense to resume airport operations once Florida relinquishes control of the airfield and that she wants to find a way to sell the airport and surrounding wetlands so that the land could be turned over to the National Park Service. The federal Big Cypress National Preserve surrounds the county land.

To make her plan a reality, Levine Cava likely will need the state as a partner. Because the airfield is part of the county’s federally funded aviation system — a network that includes MIA — Miami-Dade can’t just give away the land. Levine Cava said the county would need to sell the property for market rate — and an appraiser once valued the land at $200 million.

Florida could be a buyer, but that would probably mean keeping the airport intact.

Several years ago, Levine Cava’s administration was in touch with the DeSantis team about Florida purchasing the land, retaining the airport as a staging ground for emergency flights after a hurricane or other disaster, and then donating the wetlands to the Park Service.

Levine Cava said the talks were ongoing when DeSantis announced he was using emergency powers last summer to take over the airport for the detention facility he named Alligator Alcatraz.

Now, Levine Cava is trying to resume those talks for an effort that could stretch past DeSantis’ exit from the Governor’s Mansion in January.

Rodney Barreto, the chair of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and whose lobbying firm is active in Miami-Dade politics, was at the center of the pre-Alcatraz talks about the property. In 2021, he had proposed to Levine Cava the idea of a donation to the Park Service, with the idea of a state airfield being central to the plan.

On Thursday, Barreto said it’s hard to see Washington agreeing to letting the airport go away. In talks with what was then the Biden administration, Barreto said he was told the federal government wouldn’t want Miami-Dade to dismantle an airport that’s still used for training and with a runway that could be used in emergencies by commercial jets.

“The federal government said you have to have that airport in place,” he said. “‘Leave it alone.’ That’s the message that got back to us.”