Call for inquiry into Alligator Alcatraz’s ‘abuse of Everglades’ despite closure
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View image in fullscreenCall for inquiry into Alligator Alcatraz’s ‘abuse of Everglades’ despite closureEnvironmentalists and immigrant-rights advocates seek accounting of damage done by notorious detention center While they welcome the recent closure of the controversial Alligator Alcatraz migrant detention center, leading environmental groups and their allies say they want an independent investigation into the environmental damage the facility inflicted on the surrounding wilderness during its 12 months of operations.
Those groups made that demand alongside immigrant-rights advocates and members of Florida’s Miccosukee Tribe at a news conference on Friday outside the entrance to the shuttered detention center, where the Friends of the Everglades (FOE) executive director, Eve Samples, condemned the camp as a “failure, an obscene waste of taxpayer dollars and an abuse of the Everglades”. Samples’ comments came after her non-profit filed a lawsuit in June 2025 seeking to halt construction at Alligator Alcatraz. The Miccosukee Tribe joined the FOE lawsuit to defend tribal rights, having villages located near the $608m facility meant to detain undocumented immigrants during the second Trump administration’s ongoing immigration crackdown.
They cited the paving of 20 acres (8 hectares) without the requisite permits and the installation of new fencing and high-intensity lighting. And they testified that the bright lights had a direct impact on an estimated 2,000 acres (800 hectares) of Florida panther habitat because the big cats are displaced by the unnatural lighting during their nocturnal movements. Speakers at Friday’s news conference also noted that – despite its closure – hazardous materials continue to be trucked into Alligator Alcatraz’s former premises while vehicles containing human waste are still driving out of its gates.
In announcing the formal shutdown of the detention center on Thursday, Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, rejected criticism of the decision to hire sanitation vendors to haul that waste away from the camp. DeSantis maintained the high construction cost of the site was partly due to its design as a “self-contained” facility. “They did a really good job of keeping this contained so that it didn’t have that impact on the surrounding environment,” the Trump administration ally said.
He said that was “especially” so “given what we’ve done to support Everglades restoration”. Alligator Alcatraz was built in the middle of Florida’s fabled Everglades ecosystem, opposite an airstrip located about 45 miles (70km) west of downtown Miami. The site – which deported 21,000 people, DeSantis boasted – is surrounded by the Big Cypress national preserve, a 720,000-acre swamp that is run by the US National Park Service (NPS).
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