Just shy of its one-year opening, Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” is closing its doors, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Thursday.
He said the immigration detention center in the Everglades had done its job and no longer had detainees.
“Alligator Alcatraz fulfilled the role it was designed to serve,” Mr. DeSantis, a Republican, said at a press conference Thursday at the facility.
Left-wing activists railed against the temporary detention center since it opened last July, alleging human rights violations, adverse environmental impact on sacred and protected lands and wasteful use of taxpayer money.
State officials transferred the final migrants out of the facility last week due to safety concerns during hurricane season, the Department of Homeland Security said.
His administration opened the facility as a temporary staging and deportation hub to support President Trump’s immigration crackdown. It housed 21,000 detainees, some of whom had rap sheets of rape and murder, the governor said.
“There’s no question this mission has made the state of Florida safer,” he said.
Surrounded by Everglades swampland and the airstrip’s nearly 10,500-foot runway, Florida officials viewed it as an ideal location with dangerous wildlife as a natural perimeter. Mr. DeSantis quickly nicknamed it “Alligator Alcatraz,” claiming that would-be escapees would be trapped in the swampy waters surrounding the property or injured by its predators.
Created under the governor’s emergency powers, the $1.2 billion detention center sat on an isolated airfield in Miami-Dade County, the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport. Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava has announced the county’s intent to sell the land to the National Park Service.
Ms. Cava, a Democrat, said a review found the facility had “limited aviation utility, significant maintenance obligations, and increasingly constrained compatibility with surrounding conservation lands have reduced its long-term strategic value as an aviation asset.”
“From the very beginning, I have raised serious concerns about the ’Alligator Alcatraz’ detention facility because people have been held there in inhumane conditions without meaningful due process, while occupying land alongside one of the world’s most precious natural ecosystems,” she said in a statement. “Once this facility is decommissioned, we have an opportunity to permanently protect these lands for Everglades restoration and ensure they remain protected for generations to come. That is the legacy we should leave.”
Mr. DeSantis did not present a timeline for when Florida would return the airfield to Miami-Dade, but said that he expects the facility to be formally closed within two weeks.
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