The governor of Florida announced Thursday, June 25, the closure of the migrant detention center nicknamed the “Alcatraz of alligators”, opened in 2025 by the Trump administration and which was facing legal action from associations denouncing the conditions of detention.
This site “has today fulfilled the role for which it was designed. It now has zero detainees,” declared Republican Ron DeSantis, supporter of Donald Trump, who made the fight against illegal immigration a priority of his second term.
The “Alcatraz of alligators” was hastily assembled in June 2025, in one week flat, with bunk beds, mesh cages and white canvas pavilions, on an abandoned airfield in the middle of the marshy region of the Everglades, in south Florida (southeast). When he toured the center before its opening, Donald Trump joked that the alligators that inhabit the nearby swamps would act as cheap guards.
“Even an animal would not be treated like this”
Its geographical location and a reference to the famous prison island in San Francisco Bay – which the American president wants to reopen – earned it its nickname.
Several migrants detained in the center had testified to appalling conditions. “Not even an animal would be treated like this. It’s torture,” Luis Gonzales said by telephone from the center, explaining that he shared a rarely cleaned cell with around thirty people, in scorching conditions during the day and freezing at night, among omnipresent mosquitoes.
A lawsuit was filed against the center, arguing that migrants there were deprived of lawyers and detained without charge. Two environmental associations had also initiated legal proceedings, claiming that the site threatened the fragile ecosystem of the surrounding swamps and had been built without an environmental impact study.
A first instance judge ordered the closure of the detention center in August, before her decision was suspended a few weeks later by an appeals court, pending a review on the merits.
