‘Alligator Alcatraz’ detention center may be empty within days

A man holds an American flag in front of the entrance to Alligator Alcatraz, a new immigrant detention center located at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport in Ochopee, Fla., July 12, 2025. An immigration detention center built in the Florida Everglades threatens protected lands and wildlife, and violated federal laws when the government failed to study potential harms before construction, environmentalists argued in federal court in Miami on Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2025. (Ava Pellor/The New York Times)

By Patricia Mazzei

The number of people being held at an immigrant detention center in the Florida Everglades has decreased sharply and may soon be down to zero, despite the state’s recent insistence that the 2,000 beds at the facility were desperately needed as part of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrants lacking legal status.

Kevin Guthrie, executive director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, wrote in an email last Friday that the detention center, known as Alligator Alcatraz, was “probably going to be down to 0 individuals within a few days.”

The email, obtained by The New York Times, was sent to the office of a South Florida rabbi in response to interfaith leaders who had asked whether they could minister to detainees inside the remote center.

The state has repeatedly declined to say how many detainees it was housing at the center, which opened in early July at a remote airfield. Roughly 900 people were being held there by mid-July, according to members of Congress who visited. More than a month later, the email is the first evidence that the center is not operating at or near capacity. It comes six days after a federal judge ordered that the facility be shut down.

Rabbi Mario Rojzman of the Beth Torah Benny Rok Campus, a synagogue in North Miami Beach, did not share the email with the Times, but he confirmed its authenticity. He said in a statement that Guthrie was responding to a request from him and from other members of an interfaith clergy group working with Miami People Acting for Community Together, a nonprofit organization.

On Wednesday, Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, attributed the drop in the detention center’s population to the Department of Homeland Security. He said federal officials were deporting detainees or transferring them out of the facility more quickly, perhaps because of the ongoing litigation in federal court.

“Our role is to provide more space for processing and detention leading to deportation,” DeSantis said at a news conference in Orlando. “We are not the ones actually removing them from those facilities.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the state Division of Emergency Management did not respond to a question about how many detainees were being held at the Everglades center.

Rep. Maxwell Frost, an Orlando Democrat, wrote in a legal declaration this week that when he visited the detention center Aug. 20, state emergency management workers told him it was holding approximately 300 detainees. Frost later saw what appeared to be a population count on a whiteboard that read “336,” he wrote in the declaration.

DeSantis said this month that Florida would open a second immigration detention center, named “Deportation Depot,” at a disused state prison west of Jacksonville, because there was a “need” for more detainee capacity. Florida officials said initially that they hoped to be able to hold as many as 4,000 detainees at the Everglades detention center by the end of August, but legal filings show that its capacity remains around 2,000.

Last week, a federal judge ordered that no more immigrant detainees be sent to the center in the Everglades, and that it be emptied of detainees and its fencing, lighting and generators removed within 60 days. The judge, Kathleen Williams of U.S. District Court in Miami, ruled that the state and federal governments had failed to consider potential environmental harms before building the center.

The state has appealed that ruling and asked that the ruling be stayed, or kept from taking effect, while it pursues its appeal. As part of the case, the federal government said in a legal filing that the detention capacity created by opening the Everglades center was “essential.”

“Its removal would compromise the government’s ability to enforce immigration laws, safeguard public safety, protect national security, and maintain border security,” Garrett Ripa, the field office director for the Department of Homeland Security, wrote in a legal declaration Saturday, adding that other South Florida detention facilities “are at or above capacity.”