Advocates demand inquiry into Florida’s recently closed Alligator Alcatraz detention center

The entrance to the Alligator Alcatraz detention center in Ochopee, Florida, on 25 June 2026. Photograph: Cristóbal Herrera/EPA View image in fullscreen The entrance to the Alligator Alcatraz detention center in Ochopee, Florida, on 25 June 2026. Photograph: Cristóbal Herrera/EPA Advocates demand inquiry into Florida’s recently closed Alligator Alcatraz detention center Environmentalists and immigrant-rights advocates demand accounting of damage done by notorious Everglades facility While they welcome the recent closure of the controversial Alligator Alcatraz migrant detention center, leading environmental groups and their allies say they want an independent investigation into the environmental damage the facility inflicted on the surrounding wilderness during its 12 months of operations. Those groups made that demand alongside immigrant-rights advocates and members of Florida’s Miccosukee Tribe at a news conference on Friday outside the entrance to the shuttered detention center, where the Friends of the Everglades (FOE) executive director, Eve Samples, condemned the camp as a “failure, an obscene waste of taxpayer dollars and an abuse of the Everglades”. Samples’ comments came after her non-profit filed a lawsuit in June 2025 seeking to halt construction at Alligator Alcatraz. The Miccosukee Tribe joined the FOE lawsuit to defend tribal rights, having villages located near the $608m facility meant to detain undocumented immigrants during the second Trump administration’s ongoing immigration crackdown. DeSantis boasts of deporting 21,000 as notorious Alligator Alcatraz jail closes Read more Trump administration officials had repeatedly denied requests by environmental organizations and other concerned parties to gain access to the premises. But during four days of hearings in a federal courthouse in Miami during the previous August, FOE representatives presented evidence of how Alligator Alcatraz was causing significant environmental harm. They cited the paving of 20 acres (8 hectares) without the requisite permits and the installation of new fencing and high-intensity lighting. And they testified that the bright lights had a direct impact on an estimated 2,000 acres (800 hectares) of Florida panther habitat because the big cats are displaced by the unnatural lighting during their nocturnal movements. Speakers at Friday’s news conference also noted that – despite its closure – hazardous materials continue to be trucked into Alligator Alcatraz’s former premises while vehicles containing human waste are still driving out of its gates. In announcing the formal shutdown of the detention center on Thursday, Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis , rejected criticism of the decision to hire sanitation vendors to haul that waste away from the camp. DeSantis maintained the high construction cost of the site was partly due to its design as a “self-contained” facility. “They did a really good job of keeping this contained so that it didn’t have that impact on t