Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced that the state is closing the migrant detention facility widely known as Alligator Alcatraz. According to the report, DeSantis said the operation had fulfilled its mission at the site, signaling an end to its use at a moment when immigration enforcement has remained a central issue for both state and federal authorities in the United States.
The facility sits in a remote part of southern Florida. According to the report, it is located along a stretch of highway known as Alligator Alley, a sparsely populated corridor where the center had been used to house migrants, a setting that had given the detention site its widely used nickname and set it apart from more conventional facilities.
The governor delivered the announcement in Florida in the company of federal and state officials. According to the report, DeSantis was joined by Tom Homan, who serves as the border czar in the Trump administration, along with a group of state immigration enforcement and emergency management figures who have been involved in the state's broader enforcement effort.
DeSantis used the appearance to underscore the role Florida has taken in immigration enforcement at the state level. According to the report, he said Florida requires cooperation between state and federal law enforcement agencies and the Department of Homeland Security through arrangements known as 287G agreements, framing the state as having moved more aggressively than others on the issue.
To illustrate that point, the governor pointed to specific figures on the scale of those agreements and arrests. According to the report, DeSantis said Florida has 80% more 287G agreements than any other state, and that 40% of all 287G immigration arrests carried out across the country are taking place in Florida, which he presented as evidence of the state's leading position.
DeSantis also laid out the reasoning he said was behind the state's approach. According to the report, he cited upholding the rule of law and public safety concerns tied to crimes committed by people in the country illegally, as well as the financial burden that he said illegal immigration places on schools, health care and the criminal justice system in Florida and elsewhere.
The governor described the site as an emergency and temporary measure and pointed to the results he attributed to it. According to the report, DeSantis said the facility led to almost 21,000 deportations, that it was set up in roughly ten days, and that it sat near a runway so detained migrants could be staged and flown out, which he framed as a way to avoid releasing people with serious records back into communities for lack of bed space.