The Department of Homeland Security has begun moving detainees out of a controversial, state-run immigration detention center in the middle of the Florida Everglades dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” days after a federal judge ruled that parts of the facility must be dismantled.
The detainees are being transferred to other immigration detention centers, DHS said in a statement Wednesday, blaming a court order from an “activist judge” that it called “another attempt to prevent the President from fulfilling the American people’s mandate to remove the worst of the worst.”
“DHS is complying with this order and moving detainees to other facilities. We will continue to fight tooth-and-nail to remove the worst of the worst from American streets,” DHS said in a statement to CBS News.
In an email to a South Florida rabbi last week that CBS News obtained, a top Florida emergency official wrote that Alligator Alcatraz would likely be empty “within a few days.” The Associated Press first reported the email on Wednesday.
The Florida Division of Emergency Management said in a statement that “[t]he mission has not changed, deportations will continue, and Florida will remain at the forefront of the nation’s immigration enforcement efforts.”
“‘Alligator Alcatraz’ is a temporary deportation facility; the detainees who are delivered there will all be returned to their home countries,” the agency said. “This was ALWAYS the facility’s intent: to expedite the deportation process and support the President’s immigration initiative.”
The facility, run by Florida’s state government on a largely abandoned airstrip, is part of a wider push by the Trump administration to ramp up the number of immigration detention beds by partnering with Republican-led states willing to aid its escalating mass deportation efforts.
Republican officials in Indiana and Nebraska have also offered to convert state prisons into immigration detention centers, and the Trump administration has been eyeing similar facilities in other states.
The administration has cast “Alligator Alcatraz” as a cost-effective way of holding immigrants living in the U.S. illegally and suggested the treacherous terrain around the site could serve as a deterrent. But advocates have described inhumane conditions at the facility, including a lack of access to water, scarce and unsanitary food and limited access to attorneys — allegations that federal and state officials have denied.
Last week, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams ordered an indefinite stop to all new construction at “Alligator Alcatraz” and barred the transfer of new detainees to the facility. She also directed state officials to remove all fencing, light fixtures, generators and certain other equipment at the site within 60 days, siding with environmental activists who said the facility skirted federal environmental laws.
The ruling did not require the facility to be shut down immediately.
Florida’s state government quickly appealed Williams’ ruling last week. Late Wednesday evening, Williams declined to halt her ruling pending appeal, rejecting a request by the Trump administration and Florida.
In her new order Wednesday, Williams said federal and state officials had failed to present “new evidence” showing the detainees at “Alligator Alcatraz” are particularly dangerous or that a pause in operations at the facility would thwart immigration enforcement efforts.
“Alligator Alcatraz” is also the subject of two other lawsuits. One of them alleges that detainees have been unable to meet with their lawyers confidentially. A federal judge earlier this month dismissed one part of the suit that alleged the government had prevented detainees from filing legal challenges by not making clear which immigration court oversaw the facility, but he left the rest of the suit intact — though he moved the case from Miami to Orlando.
Another lawsuit filed last week alleges the state of Florida does not have the legal authority to operate an immigration detention center.
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