Florida’s ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ detention facility to be empty ‘within a few days’

MIAMI — The immigration detention center in Florida’s Everglades that officials have dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” soon will hold no detainees.

In an email sent to a South Florida rabbi inquiring about serving as a chaplain at the facility, the director of Florida’s Department of Emergency Management, Kevin Guthrie, replied, “We are probably going to be down to 0 individuals within a few days.”

Asked Wednesday about the declining population at the detention center, Fla. Gov. Ron DeSantis said, “I do think they’ve increased the pace of the removals from there.”

In a ruling issued last week, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams ordered Florida and the Trump administration to stop bringing new detainees to the facility and wind down operations there within 60 days.

The judge issued the preliminary injunction in response to a lawsuit filed by two environmental groups and the Miccosukee tribe. In a declaration filed in the case last week, U.S. Congressman Maxwell Frost said on a tour, he was told the current population was between 300 and 350. On a whiteboard listing the number of detainees at the time of his tour, he said “336” was written.

Since then, Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades, says volunteers monitoring the site have seen at least three buses containing detainees leaving the facility. “It’s a relief that the state appears to be phasing out operations … in compliance with the judge’s order,” she says. “When the last detainee leaves, the state should turn off the lights and shut the door behind them because it’s not an appropriate place for a detention center.”

In her order, Judge Williams said the plaintiffs had shown the hasty construction appeared to violate federal law requiring public input, consideration of alternatives and an environmental impact statement. Florida and the Trump administration have appealed the decision and are asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11^th District to stay the lower court’s injunction.

Florida built the detention center at a lightly-used “Training and Transition Airport” in the heart of the Everglades. The state says it expects to spend more than $400 million to build and operate the facility. So far, records show DeSantis has signed contracts to spend about $245 million on the detention center.

He said the decision to stop housing detainees there, at least temporarily, was made by federal immigration authorities. “We don’t determine who goes into the facility,” he said. “There’s litigation going on that DHS is a party to, and so that may be an influence about where they’re sending people.”

DHS says it is moving detainees to other facilities to comply with the judge’s order. But in a statement, a DHS spokesperson said, “This activist judge doesn’t care about the invasion of our country facilitated by the Biden administration, but the American people do. We have the law, the facts, and common sense on our side.”