All detainees from immigration facility 'Alligator Alcatraz' have been transferred

FILE - Trucks come and go from the "Alligator Alcatraz" immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades, Aug. 28, 2025, in Collier County, Fla. Rebecca Blackwell/AP hide caption

MIAMI — All detainees at an immigration detention center in an isolated airstrip in the Florida Everglades, known as "Alligator Alcatraz," have been transferred to other facilities, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said, citing concerns related to the hurricane season.

The South Florida Detention Center has been praised by President Donald Trump. But its conditions have been harshly criticized by lawyers, families and human rights groups, who have persistently denounced the mistreatment of detainees since the center opened 11 months ago, during the Atlantic hurricane season.

DHS said that all detainees at the Florida state-run facility had been transferred but did not specify how many or where they were taken. Nor did it say whether the facility would close permanently or only temporarily.

"For the safety of the illegal alien detainees, we transferred them to other facilities," department spokesperson Lauren Bis said in an emailed statement.

The hurricane season spans six months, from June through November. The detention facility opened on July 3, 2025, one month after the start of that year's hurricane season, which concluded without any storms making landfall in Florida. It has been operating since then.

Shortly after ICE announcement, the National Hurricane Center reported on Wednesday that the first tropical storm o f the 2026 hurricane season had formed off the Texas coast.

Detainees at the facility have talked about their difficulty accessing lawyers, and have described poor physical conditions, including worms in the food, toilets that don't flush, flooding floors with fecal waste, and mosquitoes and other insects everywhere.