“Alligator Alcatraz” Slated To Shut Down In June, Says Friends Group

“Alligator Alcatraz,” a migrant detention center built on an abandoned airstrip in the heart of Big Cypress National Preserve, is slated to be closed in June, according to reports from vendors at the facility, said Friends of the Everglades. The facility is located six miles north of Everglades National Park and was quickly constructed in the summer of 2025, despite backlash from conservation and environmental groups.

The report, published in the New York Times, comes as Friends of the Everglades, Center for Biological Diversity, and the Miccosukee Tribe prepare to return to court in early June when the court of appeals will return jurisdiction to the trial judge who temporarily paused operations last year.

“Alligator Alcatraz is a stain on our nation and a blight on the Everglades, and I look forward to watching this depraved facility bite the dust,” said Elise Bennett, Florida and Caribbean director and attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity.

In early July 2025, the two groups brought a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, contesting that the agency did not determine if the facility would have significant environmental effects, which is required under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). As a result, a federal judge in Florida ordered a temporary halt to construction in August and later gave the state and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security 60 days to wind down operations at the center, agreeing with plaintiffs that officials were required to comply with NEPA before building the center.

Now, Friends of the Everglades says that the detention center’s closure was announced to vendors at the facility on May 12. If state and federal officials follow through, it would end a nearly year-long run in which the facility was used to detain people as part of the Trump administration’s immigration purge.

“We won’t let up until Alligator Alcatraz is shut down and its harm to the Everglades is completely remediated,” said Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades. “This political stunt was a failure by every measure — our government failed the Everglades and failed taxpayers, and history will remember.”

The detention center site is surrounded on all sides by the Big Cypress National Preserve, which protects ecologically sensitive wetlands and a dozen endangered and threatened species, including Florida panthers, bonneted bats and other endangered species.

“State and federal officials responsible for this lawless detention center have to be held accountable,” said Tania Galloni, managing attorney for Earthjustice’s Florida regional office. “The cost to Florida’s environment, taxpayers and human decency have been too high to let them off the hook.”

As the conservation groups and the Miccosukee Tribe prepare to resume their lawsuit against the Trump administration in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida which had been stalled by the court of appeals, they notified the defendants of their intent to challenge violations of the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act and National Park Service Organic Act.

“While it is welcome news that people will no longer be inhumanely confined at this facility, the damage caused by this reckless and ill-conceived endeavor cannot simply be abandoned and forgotten,” said Paul J. Schwiep of Coffey Burlington and counsel for Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity. “This project was recklessly advanced without any meaningful regard for the remote, environmentally sensitive and ecologically fragile landscape in which it was imposed…We will continue pressing until full remediation is completed and this wild and irreplaceable area is restored and left undisturbed.”