Trump empties Florida's Alligator Alcatraz amid soaring costs

The U.S. has emptied the immigration detention camp in the Florida Everglades known as Alligator Alcatraz after the state spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the high-profile facility to support President Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement that the jail, a sprawling complex of tents and trailers that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis ordered built last year atop a decommissioned airfield, was emptied in coordination with state and federal authorities as the Atlantic hurricane season gets underway.

"For the safety of the illegal alien detainees, we transfered them to other facilities," the agency said in its statement.

ICE reported more than 1,300 people were being detained at the camp as of April, the most recent data available. The agency did not say how many people were moved out or where they were taken.

DeSantis said last month that the camp was intended to be temporary and that there were discussions about closing it, but denied reports that the Department of Homeland Security was pressuring Florida to shut it down because of the expense. State records released in a lawsuit showed the camp cost more than $1 million a day to operate.

The Republican governor, at a news conference in Winter Haven on Tuesday, said more than 20,000 immigrants detained in the state had passed through the camp since it opened in July. Now flush with federal funding, ICE doesn't need to use the facility to house immigrants being swept up in Trump's immigration dragnet, DeSantis said.

"We were never going to make that a permanent facility," DeSantis said. "It's served a huge, huge purpose."

Built in just eight days on a site surrounded by Everglades wetlands infested with mosquitoes and alligators, Alligator Alcatraz was thrust into the national spotlight the day it opened when DeSantis took the president on a tour.

Florida spent least $330 million to build the facility, using no-bid contracts with firms that provide relief services after hurricanes. The state projected total costs could reach $1 billion by July 2027 and had already requested $600 million in federal reimbursement.

The camp has been a magnet for national opposition to Trump's aggressive immigration crackdown, drawing multiple lawsuits and protests over alleged mistreatment by guards, lack of access to lawyers for detainees, flooding and searing heat.

Immigrant detainees, their lawyers and civil right advocates have long fought to close the jail, arguing in part that detainees are held in substandard conditions. Other groups have challenged its operations on environmental grounds.

"This destructive detention camp in the middle of the Everglades should have never been built, but I'm glad it may finally shut down," said Elise Bennett, a lawyer at the Center for Biological Diversity, told Bloomberg Law in May.

For DeSantis, a longtime Trump ally who became a rival in the 2024 Republican primaries, the camp has been central to efforts to play a prominent role in the deportation campaign. Florida officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the removal of detainees.

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