Environmentalists sue to stop Florida’s ‘Alligator Alcatraz” deportation center

Deep in the Everglades, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s administration has swiftly begun construction of an ICE detention center on an airfield surrounded by wetlands that will house up to 1,000 detainees and could open as soon as next week. In a Friday interview with Fox News, DeSantis called the new center “Alligator Alcatraz” and said deportation flights could also take off from the airfield, which was previously used for military and law enforcement training. “This is going to be a force multiplier and we’re really happy to be working with the federal government to satisfy President Trump’s mandate,” he said.

Florida is expected to pay $450 million a year to run the facility, with the possibility of being reimbursed by the federal government, the Miami Herald reported. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said the detention center will be mostly comprised of “light infrastructure,” the Herald reported, such as tents and trailers. He suggested in a video posted to X that the facility’s location would deter escapes: “People get out, there’s not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons,” Uthmeier said

The project has faced considerable backlash in recent days from immigrant advocacy groups, environmentalists, and Miami-Dade county mayor Daniella Levine Cava. The Miccosukee Tribe has also publicly opposed the construction of the center on its ancestral lands. “The state would save substantial taxpayer dollars by pursuing its goals at a different location with more existing infrastructure and less environmental and cultural impacts,” Talbert Cypress, chair of the tribe, wrote in a statement posted to Facebook. 

On Friday, two environmentalist groups filed a lawsuit in federal court against federal and state officials to halt the project, the Tampa Bay Times reported, arguing that the project proceeded without an environmental review and opportunity for public comment. Instead, the complaint reads, construction has already commenced at a “breakneck pace,” as crews transported kitchen facilities, restrooms, industrial lighting, and dump trucks onto the airfield.

The site is located within the Big Cypress National Preserve, “a nationally and State protected, and ecologically sensitive, area that serves as habitat for endangered and threatened species like the Florida panther, Florida bonneted bat, Everglade Snail kite, wood stork, and numerous other species,” according to the environmental groups’ complaint. 

Plans for the center are largely a response to a nationwide surge in immigration detention. As my colleague Isabela Dias recently reported, the number of people held by ICE now surpasses 56,000—an unprecedented level. “The record high detention numbers also raise concerns about overcrowding, especially since the Department of Homeland Security is imposing new rules restricting access by members of Congress to ICE facilities,” she wrote.

That Florida is undertaking such a massive detention center project is not a surprise. As I reported in April, under DeSantis the state has passed a slew of anti-immigrant laws and has encouraged local police and jails to collaborate with ICE on immigration arrests.