Top Florida official says 'Alligator Alcatraz' will likely be empty
within days, email shows
[August 28, 2025]
By KATE PAYNE and MIKE SCHNEIDER
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A top Florida official says the controversial
state-run immigration detention facility in the Everglades will likely
be empty in a matter of days, even as Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis'
administration and the federal government fight a judge's order to
shutter the facility dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” by late October. That's
according to an email exchange shared with The Associated Press.
In a message sent to South Florida Rabbi Mario Rojzman on Aug. 22
related to providing chaplaincy services at the facility, Florida
Division of Emergency Management Executive Director Kevin Guthrie said
“we are probably going to be down to 0 individuals within a few days,"
implying there would soon be no need for the services.
Rojzman, and an executive assistant for the rabbi who sent an original
email to Guthrie, confirmed to the AP on Wednesday Guthrie's emailed
response to both of them and the veracity of the messages.
A spokesperson for Guthrie, whose agency has overseen the construction
and operation of the site, did not immediately respond to a request for
comment.
DeSantis suggests deportations are behind declining population
Questioned about the email exchange by a reporter at an event in
Orlando, DeSantis framed the declining population as the result of an
uptick in deportations by the Department of Homeland Security.
“Ultimately it’s DHS's decision where they want to process and stage
detainees and it’s their decision about when they want to bring them
out,” DeSantis said. He acknowledged the ongoing litigation may be "an
influence” on the pace of deportations.
While DeSantis sought to minimize the state's role in removals,
attorneys for the federal government have said in legal filings that
“any decision" to detain unauthorized immigrants at the center “would be
Florida’s decision, not DHS’s,” adding that the facility operates using
“state funds on state lands under state emergency authority.”
Peak detainee population neared 1,000
The facility was rapidly constructed two months ago with the goal of
holding up to 3,000 detainees as part of President Donald Trump's push
to deport people who are in the U.S. illegally. At one point, it held
almost 1,000 detainees, but U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., said that
he was told during a tour last week that only 300 to 350 detainees
remained. Three lawsuits challenging practices at the detention center
have been filed, including one that estimated at least 100 detainees who
had been at the facility have been deported. Others have been
transferred to other immigration detention centers.
News that the last detainee at “Alligator Alcatraz” could leave the
facility within days came less than a week after a federal judge in
Miami ordered the detention center to wind down operations, with the
last detainee needing to be out within 60 days. The state of Florida
appealed the decision, and the federal government asked U.S. District
Judge Kathleen Williams to put her order on hold pending the appeal,
saying that the Everglades facility’s thousands of beds were badly
needed since other detention facilities in Florida were overcrowded.
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Work progresses on a new migrant detention facility dubbed
"Alligator Alcatraz," at Dade-Collier Training and Transition
facility in the Florida Everglades, on July 4, 2025, in Ochopee,
Fla. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)
Environmental groups and the Miccosukee Tribe, whose lawsuit led to the
judge’s ruling, opposed the request. They disputed that the Everglades
facility was needed, especially as Florida plans to open a second
immigration detention facility in north Florida that DeSantis has dubbed
“Deportation Depot.”
Williams had not ruled on the stay request as of Wednesday.
Lawsuits claim ‘severe problems’ at facility
The judge said in her order that she expected the population of the
facility to decline within 60 days by transferring detainees to other
facilities, and once that happened, fencing, lighting and generators
should be removed.
Environmental groups and the Miccosukee Tribe had argued in their
lawsuit that further construction and operations should be stopped until
federal and state officials complied with federal environmental laws.
Their lawsuit claimed the facility threatened environmentally sensitive
wetlands that are home to protected plants and animals and would
undermine billions of dollars spent over decades on environmental
restoration.
By late July, state officials had already signed more than $245 million
in contracts for building and operating the facility at a lightly used,
single-runway training airport in the middle of the rugged and remote
Everglades. The center officially opened July 1.
In their lawsuits, civil rights attorneys described “severe problems” at
the facility which were “previously unheard-of in the immigration
system.” Detainees were being held for weeks without any charges, they
had disappeared from ICE’s online detainee locator and no one at the
facility was making initial custody or bond determinations, they said.
Detainees also had described worms turning up in the food, toilets that
didn't flush, flooding floors with fecal waste, and mosquitoes and other
insects everywhere.
___
Associated Press writer Mike Schneider in Orlando contributed to this
report. Kate Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for
America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit
national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to
report on undercovered issues.
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