Florida officials are in talks with the Trump administration about closing down “Alligator Alcatraz,” the cheeky term for a pop-up detention center for illegal immigrants in the Everglades, in the near future, the Washington Examiner has learned.
“It is closing,” a former senior administration official with knowledge of the talks told the Washington Examiner on Friday. “Too expensive and they want it out before this hurricane season.”
Hurricane season runs from June 1 to Nov. 30.
The confirmation follows a New York Times report this week that state and federal officials were in talks about shuttering the site soon. A spokesperson for Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) did not comment on the future of Alligator Alcatraz and referred the Washington Examiner to the governor’s remarks a day earlier.
DeSantis stopped shy of admitting during a press conference on Thursday that the site would be closed, only noting that both parties were discussing operations moving forward.
“They haven’t said they want to wind it down. I mean, it’s been discussed about, because I think you had a new secretary come in, take a fresh look at these things,” DeSantis said. “At some point we will, we will, of course, break it down. That was always the goal.”
While open, approximately 22,000 illegal immigrants who were housed on-site have been deported, DeSantis said on Thursday.
“If we didn’t have that facility … they would have been released back to the public,” DeSantis said. “I have no doubt that that has made the state of Florida safer. I have no doubt that that has saved lives.”
Due to a shortage of federally contracted detention space early on in the Trump administration’s effort to carry out mass deportations, the Department of Homeland Security brokered deals to build new and sometimes makeshift facilities that allow ICE to detain thousands of illegal immigrants as they are arrested inside the country.
Those initially detained by federal immigration authorities in the region have been held at Alligator Alcatraz, which was named in light of the 200,000 wild alligators that live in the surrounding swampland. The White House applauded this and other efforts by the DeSantis administration and called for more of them.
“‘Alligator Alcatraz’ is a state-of-the-art facility that will play a critical role in fulfilling the President’s promise to get the worst criminal illegal aliens out of America as fast as possible,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson wrote in an email.
Alligator Alcatraz had space for 2,000 people initially, and its operators intended to grow detention space over time. Last July, DeSantis debuted Alligator Alcatraz with a visit from President Donald Trump and then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
“One of the reasons why this was a sensible spot is because you have this runway that’s right here,” DeSantis said last July. “You don’t have to drive them an hour to an airport.”
The Trump administration used the remote site that is adjacent to an airplane runway to deport illegal immigrants once a judge signed off on the order.
Between July 2025 and September 2025, the DHS partnered with state officials and opened Alligator Alcatraz and “Deportation Depot” in Florida, “Speedway Slammer” in Indiana, “Cornhusker Clink” in Nebraska, and “Louisiana Lockup” in Louisiana, with more alliterative facilities expected on the horizon.
Combined, the state sites added jail space for an additional 10,000 illegal immigrants beyond the roughly 50,000 beds available at existing ICE facilities, and though some have faced legal challenges, most notably Alligator Alcatraz, the administration has vowed to move forward with its detention center expansion.
The Everglades site has cost approximately $1 million a day to operate, money that Florida is still waiting for DHS to reimburse.
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The future of the other temporary detention sites remains unclear. It has survived legal action in court and was recently spared by a federal appeals court decision not to shut it down.
The DHS did not respond to a request for comment.