{"id":319765,"date":"2026-06-25T19:28:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T19:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/319765\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T19:28:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T19:28:11","slug":"desantis-boasts-of-deporting-21000-as-notorious-alligator-alcatraz-jail-closes-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/319765\/","title":{"rendered":"DeSantis boasts of deporting 21,000 as notorious Alligator Alcatraz jail closes | Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ron DeSantis, Florida\u2019s Republican governor, boasted on Thursday of deporting 21,000 people from Alligator Alcatraz, as he confirmed the closure of the notorious immigration jail hastily erected in the Everglades that became a byword for cruelty and human rights abuses<\/a> and environmental damage.<\/p>\n

Standing beside Tom Homan, Donald Trump\u2019s so-called border czar, at a press conference at the now dismantled site in Ochopee in the environmentally sensitive region in south Florida<\/a>, DeSantis presented its year-long operation as a victory for the president\u2019s aggressive immigration enforcement agenda.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlligator Alcatraz fulfilled the role it was designed to serve,\u201d he said, adding that all of the detainees held there until last week had been transferred into federal immigration custody elsewhere.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you start talking about 21,000 folks, that without question has made our state safer, and it\u2019s made the country safer as well,\u201d DeSantis added.<\/p>\n

Critics, however, said the jail run by the Florida state, on which the governor was reportedly spending $1.2m a day<\/a> of Florida taxpayers\u2019 money, was a political liability for DeSantis.<\/p>\n

There was a groundswell that publicity over the multiplying reports of \u201cinhumane\u201d treatment<\/a> of undocumented detainees, including physical abuse and isolation from legal representation, was becoming untenable.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlligator Alcatraz is now shut down due to the relentless action of thousands of people who refused to stand idly by,\u201d said Noelle Damico, director of social justice at the Workers Circle, an advocacy group that held a 47th and final weekly \u201cfreedom vigil\u201d outside the remote jail on Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe denounced the brutality, lawlessness, chaos and corruption that was Alligator Alcatraz. We, the people, made it politically toxic. We brought it to an end here, and we will bring it to an end everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

DeSantis did not address the treatment of the detainees, but maintained that most of those who passed through the tented jail were criminals. It was hastily constructed last summer<\/a> at a mostly defunct municipal training airport, in order to allow frequent deportation flights.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose would be people, by and large, who would have been released back into society in Florida had this space not been there,\u201d he said, before citing 10 names of individual detainees he said had \u201cmassive rap sheets\u201d including sexual assault of minors, drugs trafficking, fraud, DUI and domestic battery.<\/p>\n

Homan was even more forthright, in effect calling reports of mistreatment of detainees a hoax, and saying, without evidence, that up to 70% of those arrested were criminals or had pending charges.<\/p>\n

Homan said: \u201cPeople say this administration is inhumane. Let me tell you something, illegal immigration right now is down 97% at the border. That means less women are being sexually assaulted making that journey. That means less children are dying making that journey. That means less fentanyl is getting into the country to kill Americans. That means less national security threats are being let in this country.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe targeting of public safety threats and national security threats are the priority of the president, and we\u2019re achieving that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Evidence collected by media investigations during the year that Alligator Alcatraz was in operation, however, contradicts the assertions of DeSantis and Homan, and especially of Trump, who previously said<\/a> that the facility was reserved for \u201cthe most menacing migrants, some of the most vicious people on the planet\u201d.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of detainees had no criminal records or charges<\/a>, it was disclosed last July, with their only alleged violation that of being in the US without legal documents, a civil offense. The majority of people detained in federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) jails around the country have no criminal convictions<\/a>. Violating immigration law is a civil offense in the US.<\/p>\n

DeSantis briefly spoke about the environmental impact at the site, which is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit<\/a> brought by several advocacy groups and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians who claim the jail has harmed the fragile Everglades wetlands with pollution and the acres of new slabs of concrete on which its tents were placed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey did a really good job of keeping this contained, so that it didn\u2019t have that impact on the surrounding environment, especially given what we\u2019ve done to support Everglades restoration,\u201d DeSantis said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen this was proposed as this possible short-term solution, that was clearly one of my questions. I was like, well, what\u2019s that going to mean? And they were saying, no, here\u2019s how we do, here\u2019s how we contain it, and they did.\u201d<\/p>\n

The governor said he was also still expecting that the federal government would reimburse Florida for up to $1bn spent on the jail, but was unable to give a timeline.<\/p>\n

Damico said the closure of Alligator Alcatraz represented a humiliation for the DeSantis and Trump administrations, but forced the immigration fight to other places, such as the governor\u2019s touted \u201cdeportation depot\u201d at a former state prison in Baker county.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor their own political ends, they tried to convince Americans to hate and fear immigrants and tolerate or justify brutality toward them. They failed,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey failed here and will continue to fail across the nation because ordinary people said, \u2018no, this is not who we are. This is not the America we will become.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cTogether we stood as immigrants and citizens alike, reflecting the strength of America, a belief in our constitution, and the commitment to go the distance, shoulder-to-shoulder for freedom and justice.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ron DeSantis, Florida\u2019s Republican governor, boasted on Thursday of deporting 21,000 people from Alligator Alcatraz, as he confirmed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319766,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-319765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}