Controversial US migrant detention facility dubbed ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ has closed
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said the facility, which had been denounced as inhumane by civil rights groups, fulfilled its role
The controversial “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration detention centre – a costly Florida facility that became a symbol of US President Donald Trump’s deportation drive – has shut down after less than a year in operation, officials said Thursday.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, appearing at the remote Everglades site with White House border tsar Tom Homan, said the facility no longer held any detainees and had fulfilled the emergency role it was built to serve.
The facility drew fierce criticism from lawyers, families, civil rights groups and human rights advocates, who accused the government of holding detainees in harsh conditions and denying them meaningful due process.
“Alligator Alcatraz fulfilled the role that it was designed to serve,” DeSantis said, adding that it had helped remove “many, many dangerous people” from Florida and the United States.
The centre was assembled in just eight days in June last year with bunk beds, wire cages and large white tents at an abandoned airfield in the Everglades, home to a large population of alligators.
Trump, who has vowed to deport millions of undocumented migrants, visited the detention site after its July 2025 opening, boasting about the harsh conditions and joking that the reptilian predators would serve as guards.