Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said on June 25, 2026, that the Everglades immigration detention site known as “Alligator Alcatraz” has done what it was intended to do and will now shut down. The tent-and-trailer complex, promoted by the Trump administration and condemned by civil rights advocates as abusive, opened in July 2025 as a stopgap measure until federal authorities could secure longer-term detention space, DeSantis said.
At a news conference held at the facility, the Republican governor said Florida created the center to fill a temporary need and that federal officials now have enough permanent capacity. “We stepped up because there was a gap, but my hope is that they’ll be able to handle that,” he said. DeSantis said the state expects the site to be fully decommissioned within one to two weeks.
State officials had already announced a temporary closure earlier in June and transferred all detainees elsewhere, citing hurricane season and the risks of keeping people in the Everglades during severe weather. DeSantis said the airstrip around which the detention center was built will remain in use, and local officials have since said the land could eventually be sold for Everglades restoration and permanent conservation.
The center was assembled in just a few days by DeSantis’ administration. Both DeSantis and President Donald Trump had described it as an important part of Republican efforts to remove people living in the country illegally and return them to their home nations. DeSantis said 21,000 people were deported through the site, adding, “There is no question this mission has made the state of Florida safer.”
Tom Homan, the White House border czar, said Thursday that Florida will remain central to immigration enforcement even after the Everglades site closes, through other detention facilities and expanded cooperation with federal authorities. “Gov. DeSantis did a good job, and he’s going to continue doing what he’s doing to help us make this country safe again,” Homan said. “This isn’t the end of relationship. This is a continuation.”
Immigration advocates have long argued the center’s tents were unsafe and unfit for human confinement. Detainees said they struggled to reach lawyers and described harsh living conditions, including worms in meals, broken toilets, floors contaminated with fecal waste, and pervasive mosquitoes and other insects. They said they were housed in large white tents lined with rows of bunk beds behind chain-link barriers, and that air conditioning could fail suddenly in Florida’s extreme heat. Some said they went days without showers or access to prescription medications.
Advocacy groups said the shutdown does not erase the damage done to people held for months while their families suffered outside. The Florida Immigrant Coalition said the only beneficiaries were corporations and contractors that made millions of dollars while Republicans promoted what the group called a nonexistent immigration emergency.
Attorneys representing immigrants held at the site said their clients began being moved earlier this month to other detention centers in South Florida, California, Arizona, Louisiana and Texas. According to the lawyers, many detainees effectively vanished for about a week before attorneys and relatives were informed where they had been sent.
The detention center also sparked legal action from environmental groups, which argued that state officials failed to obtain required permits and skipped mandatory reviews of the project’s environmental effects. Paul J. Schwiep, a lawyer for Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity, said the closure would not end the governments’ responsibility for what happened there. He said in a statement Thursday that the site was built and closed without public oversight, and added: “The administration believes it can quietly walk away and leave its mess for others to clean up. The law will not allow them to escape accountability. We will ask the courts to ensure that the environmental damage is fully addressed.”