Alligator Alcatraz is closed. The fight that shut it down isn’t over.
Just over one year after Florida announced it would open, "Alligator Alcatraz," is shutting down.
The immigrant detention center was built in the heart of the Everglades, a 60-mile-wide stretch of protected wetlands in south Florida. State officials have framed the closure as a practical response to hurricane season. But BreakThrough News reported on the project from its earliest days, including on the ground as it was built and as resistance was growing, and a different story emerges: sustained organizing, legal challenges, and mounting evidence of abuse and corruption made the project increasingly unsustainable.
The closure is an important victory. But serious questions remain about the fate of immigrants detained there and about accountability for the abuses and public money tied to the facility. That fight is only beginning.
Alligator Alcatraz became one of the clearest symbols of the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign and of the resistance it provoked.
Seeking to position Florida at the forefront of that campaign, Governor Ron DeSantis announced plans in the summer of 2025 to construct a new immigrant detention center on the abandoned Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport deep within the Everglades.