Florida plans to close Alligator Alcatraz, vendors are reportedly told.
Source: Sun Sentinel
Florida intends to shut down a high-profile immigration detention center that it opened last summer in the Everglades, according to a federal official and three people familiar with the facility’s operations. Officials at the center, known as Alligator Alcatraz, told vendors there Tuesday afternoon that it was closing, the people familiar with the facility’s operations said.
Vendors were told that detainees would be moved from the facility by the start of June and that the center would be broken down over the following weeks, the three people said. The three people and the federal official all requested anonymity to discuss the closure, which has not yet been made public.
It is unclear where the detainees would go; the federal government runs many other detention centers, including in Florida. The Everglades center, which is run by the state, held about 1,400 detainees as of last month, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement data.
The announcement came days after The New York Times reported that Florida was in talks with the Trump administration to shut down the center, which has cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars to operate since it opened last July. Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, confirmed after the article’s publication that federal and state officials had discussed closing the center.
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Some private vendors the state hired to help operate the center have been struggling to front costs. One vendor, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal from the state, said in an interview last week that the state had not paid some invoices in more than 200 days.
Read more: https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2026/05/12/florida-plans-to-close-alligator-alcatraz-vendors-are-reportedly-told-2/
Do the math: they have been spending over $1,000,000/day to incarcerate 1,400 (or often, fewer) people. That's $714+/day to house and abuse a mostly non-criminal bunch of immigrants in tents. The bankruptcy is both moral and financial.
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