Call for inquiry into Alligator Alcatraz’s ‘abuse of Everglades’ despite closure | Florida

While the controversial Alligator welcomes the recent closure of the Alcatraz immigrant detention center, leading environmental groups and their allies say they want an independent investigation into the environmental damage the facility inflicted on surrounding wildlife during its 12 months of operations.

Those groups, along with immigrant rights advocates and members of the Miccosukee Tribe in Florida, made the demand at a news conference Friday outside the entrance of the shuttered detention center; where Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades (FOE), condemned the camp as “a failure, an obscene waste of taxpayer dollars, and a misuse of the Everglades.”

Samples’ comments came after his nonprofit filed a lawsuit in June 2025 to stop construction on Alligator Alcatraz. The Miccosukee Tribe joined the FOE lawsuit to defend tribal rights by owning villages located near the $608 million facility aimed at detaining undocumented immigrants during the second Trump administration’s ongoing immigration crackdown.

Trump administration officials have repeatedly denied requests from environmental organizations and other interested parties to gain access to the facility. But during four days of hearings at the federal courthouse in Miami last August, FOE representatives presented evidence of how Alligator Alcatraz caused significant environmental damage.

They cited the paving of 20 acres (8 ha) without the necessary permits and the installation of new fencing and high-intensity lighting. And the bright lights have a direct impact on an estimated 2,000 acres (800 hectares) of Florida panther habitat, they said, because the big cats are displaced by unnatural light during their nocturnal movements.

Speakers at Friday’s press conference also noted that despite being closed, hazardous materials continue to be trucked into Alligator Alcatraz’s former facilities, and vehicles containing human waste are still leaving its doors.

Announcing the official closure of the detention center on Thursday, Florida governor Ron DeSantis dismissed criticism of his decision to enlist cleaning service providers to remove waste from the camp. DeSantis suggested that the site’s high construction cost was due in part to its design as a “freestanding” facility.

“They’ve done a really good job of keeping this under control so that it doesn’t have such an impact on the surrounding environment,” the Trump administration ally said. He said this was “especially” “given what we’ve done to support Everglades restoration.”

Alligator Alcatraz was built in the middle of Florida’s legendary Everglades ecosystem, across from an airstrip located about 45 miles (70 km) west of downtown Miami. The area, which DeSantis boasted has deported 21,000 people, is surrounded by the Big Cypress national preserve, a 720,000-acre swamp managed by the U.S. National Park Service (NPS).

The preserve is home to a wide range of fauna, with a population believed to be around 200, including alligators, alligators, eastern diamondback rattlesnakes and other predators such as bobcats, coyotes and Florida’s famous panthers.

A wet cypress forest dominates the mosquito-infested preserve, but few of the giant cypress trees that impressed early explorers remain. Native American villages and boat tour operators line the Tamiami Trail, which connects the preserve to the vast metropolitan Miami, and fishermen are often seen along the canal that runs parallel to the two-lane highway, commonly known as Alligator Alley.

The damage inflicted by the immigration detention center on the surrounding hinterland wasn’t the only topic on the agenda at Friday’s news briefing. Ana María Hernández, director of civic engagement for the Florida Immigrant Coalition, also highlighted the human toll caused by the deplorable conditions of the detainees wandering around the Alligator Alcatraz.

Hernández, a native of Medellín, Colombia, who immigrated to the United States with his family at the age of 10, said he witnessed firsthand the cruel and at times capricious nature of the Trump administration’s campaign against immigrants, whether they had permission to be in the country or not.

Her cousin’s Cuban husband came to the United States at the turn of the century. And under the generous terms of the federal Cuban Adjustment Act, he was granted a work permit and allowed to obtain a driver’s license.

Hernández, who calls himself only by his first name, Wilson, said he is now in his mid-40s and has two teenage sons and a small business in Miami. And he had been meeting routinely with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials to renew his legal status every year for the past 25 years.

But his last visit to ICE offices in the Fort Lauderdale suburb of Miramar in January was far from routine. He said Wilson was suddenly arrested and transported to the Alligator Alcatraz facility.

According to Hernández, the reasons for his arrest were never disclosed. He said he was only allowed to shower every three or four days during his stay there.

On one occasion, Hernández said, he was given men’s underwear stained with feces. He said that by the end of his first 20-day detention at the camp, Wilson had become ashamed of his own body odor.

He said Wilson spent more than five months being transported from Alligator Alcatraz to prisons in Texas and Louisiana and then back to the Everglades-based detention center. Hernández said Wilson was finally released from ICE custody in early June and rejoined his loved ones and friends.

However, he said the experience shattered his trust and belief in his adopted homeland.

“In Florida, people are detained because of the color of their skin or because they speak English with an accent,” Hernández, 36, said. “People who have legal status or are U.S. citizens are detained in this way.”