COLLIER COUNTY, Fla. — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis held a news conference at the site of the “Alligator Alcatraz” migrant detention facility on Thursday morning. He announced its shutdown.
It came a little more than a week after detainees were moved out of the Collier County facility, officially the home of the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, citing hurricane concerns.
“There’s no question that its mission made the state of Florida safer,” DeSantis said during Thursday’s announcement, saying the facility was always designed to be temporary. He said it would take one to two weeks to fully decommission the facility.
The news conference featured White House Border Czar Tom Homan and Florida State Board of Immigration Enforcement Executive Director Anthony Coker.
“Today doesn’t end the cooperation” between the state and federal governments, Homan said.
Immigration advocates said the tents were never safe or humane to hold people. 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.
The detention center was built by DeSantis’ administration in a matter of days in 2025 and President Trump came to visit site.
DeSantis and Trump said the detention center was critical to Republican efforts to return people in the country illegally back to their home countries. The Republican governor said 21,000 people were deported through the facility.
DeSantis and Homan repeatedly assured that the federal government would ultimately reimburse the state for the costs of running the facility, not specifying any amount that has yet been paid or that is left to be paid.
Miami-Dade mayor seeks sale
Meanwhile, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava announced on Thursday that her office intends to sell the county-owned airport “to the National Park Service and other authorized Everglades restoration partners for permanent conservation following the eventual decommissioning of the immigration detention facility currently operating at the site.”
A county news release states that Levine Cava’s office “will evaluate and identify the appropriate legal process for the sale and transfer of the property for incorporation into the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan.”
“From the very beginning, I have raised serious concerns about the ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ detention facility because people have been held there in inhumane conditions without meaningful due process, while occupying land alongside one of the world’s most precious natural ecosystems,” Levine Cava said in the release. “Once this facility is decommissioned, we have an opportunity to permanently protect these lands for Everglades restoration and ensure they remain protected for generations to come. That is the legacy we should leave.”
The release states that the airport’s “remote location, limited aviation utility, significant maintenance obligations, and increasingly constrained compatibility with surrounding conservation lands have reduced its long-term strategic value as an aviation asset.”
The airport was built in the late 1960s as the Everglades Jetport, with plans to turn it into the world’s largest airport and a supersonic travel hub.
Under the grand plans, the airport would have been linked to Miami by monorail.
But the cancellation of the planned Boeing 2707 supersonic jet and environmental concerns surrounding the Everglades location meant that the project never materialized.
Copyright 2026 by WPLG Local10.com - All rights reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
