MIAMI — Every person being held at a remote immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades — widely known as “Alligator Alcatraz” — has been moved to other facilities, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The agency pointed to concerns about the ongoing hurricane season as the reason for the relocations.
The South Florida Detention Center had drawn sharply divided reactions since it opened 11 months ago. President Donald Trump publicly praised the facility, while lawyers, families, and human rights organizations repeatedly condemned what they described as the mistreatment of those held there.
DHS confirmed that all detainees at the Florida state-run facility had been transferred, but the agency did not disclose how many people were moved, where they were sent, or whether the facility would be shut down for good or only temporarily.
“For the safety of the illegal alien detainees, we transferred them to other facilities,” department spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a written statement.
Hurricane season runs from June through November. The detention facility originally opened on July 3, 2025 — a full month after the start of that year’s hurricane season — and continued operating through a season that ended without any storms hitting Florida. Shortly after the federal immigration agency’s announcement, the National Hurricane Center reported Wednesday that the first tropical storm of the 2026 hurricane season had developed off the coast of Texas.
People held at the facility described a range of troubling conditions, including difficulty reaching attorneys, worms found in food, toilets that failed to flush, floors flooded with sewage, and insects throughout the tents.
The facility was constructed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration in just a matter of days, surrounded by alligator-infested swampland in the Everglades. Trump visited the site on July 1, 2025, two days before it officially opened.
The Florida Division of Emergency Management, the primary state agency overseeing the facility’s operations, had not responded to a media request for comment as of Wednesday.
Advocacy groups had argued from the start that the tent-based facility was never a safe or humane place to hold people.
“Transferring people out of this cruel facility is an important step, but it does not erase the harm that has already been done,” said Amy Godshall, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who filed a lawsuit against both the state and federal government over detainees’ lack of access to legal representation. “The state and federal government must permanently close this facility and commit to never detaining people there again.”
DeSantis stated in May that the South Florida Detention Facility was always intended to be a temporary operation. He said the facility had processed and deported 22,000 detainees since it first opened.
Immigration advocates and attorneys said they began noticing an uptick in transfers over the past two weeks, during which time they lost contact with dozens of clients.
Katie Blankenship, an immigration attorney at Sanctuary of the South, said all 50 clients that she and fellow attorneys had been advising free of charge had been moved from “Alligator Alcatraz” to other facilities located in South Florida, California, Arizona, Louisiana, and Texas.
“They are all gone,” Blankenship said. She added that she received no official notification about the moves — instead, she pieced together what happened after clients failed to appear at scheduled hearings or missed phone calls. Using an official detainee search tool, she was able to track down her clients and confirm they had been relocated to other facilities.
