At a press conference at the dismantled site in Ochopee, DeSantis stood alongside White House border czar Tom Homan and declared the jail’s mission complete. “Alligator Alcatraz fulfilled the role it was designed to serve,” he said. The governor noted that all detainees remaining at the facility have been transferred into federal immigration custody.
DeSantis credited the facility with 21,000 deportations, saying “when you start talking about 21,000 folks, that without question has made our state safer, and it’s made the country safer as well.” He claimed the majority of those processed were criminals, and listed ten names he said had extensive rap sheets including sexual assault of minors, drug trafficking, fraud, DUI, and domestic battery.
Homan defended the administration’s immigration enforcement more broadly, asserting without evidence that up to 70% of detainees had criminal records or pending charges. “People say this administration is inhumane,” Homan said. He cited a 97% reduction in illegal border crossings and argued that detention reduced sexual assault, child deaths, and fentanyl flow.
The assertions of high criminality conflict with earlier media investigations. Reports last July disclosed that hundreds of detainees at Alligator Alcatraz had no criminal records or charges; being in the U.S. without legal documents is a civil offense, not a crime. The majority of people detained in federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) jails around the country also lack criminal convictions.
The facility drew widespread condemnation over the past year for what advocates described as cruel conditions, including physical abuse and limited access to legal representation. Noelle Damico, director of social justice at the Workers Circle, whose group held 47 weekly “freedom vigils” outside the jail, called the closure a victory. “We denounced the brutality, lawlessness, chaos and corruption that was Alligator Alcatraz,” she said. “We, the people, made it politically toxic. We brought it to an end here, and we will bring it to an end everywhere.”
The closure also intersects with a federal lawsuit brought by environmental groups and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians, who argue that the facility’s construction on a remote Everglades airstrip damaged fragile wetlands. DeSantis said the jail had been set up with containment measures and that “they did a really good job of keeping this contained.” He said he expects the federal government to reimburse Florida for up to $1 billion spent on the jail, though he did not provide a timeline.
Damico said the closure represents a political rebuke to DeSantis and Trump, but cautioned that the immigration enforcement fight would now turn to other facilities, including the state’s “Deportation Depot” in Baker County. “For their own political ends, they tried to convince Americans to hate and fear immigrants and tolerate or justify brutality toward them,” she said. “They failed.”