MIAMI — The first deportation flights from Florida’s new immigration detention center in the Everglades began departing this week, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Friday, about three weeks after federal detainees started to arrive at what appears to be the nation’s only state-run migrant detention facility.
About 100 of those detainees were deported directly from the center, which Florida officials have named “Alligator Alcatraz,” the governor said, though he did not specify where they were taken. Hundreds more had been flown to federal deportation hubs in other states, such as Louisiana, he added at a news conference. He said the flights were operated by the Department of Homeland Security.
The detention facility in the Everglades, which immigration experts have described as the only one of its kind, is essentially a cluster of hastily erected tents and trailers on an old airfield. DeSantis said it had been equipped with ground-to-air communications, radar and runway lighting, with 5,000 gallons of jet fuel on site.
“This airport is able to accept commercial flight aircraft and conduct both day and nighttime operations,” he said.
State officials have said the detainees at the facility have final deportation orders from the federal government, but immigration lawyers say they have not had adequate access to clients being held there. The American Civil Liberties Union sued last week over detainees’ lack of access to legal counsel and violations of due process.
“The U.S. Constitution does not allow the government to simply lock people away without any ability to communicate with counsel or to petition the court for release from custody,” Eunice Cho, senior counsel with the ACLU’s National Prison Project and the lead lawyers in the case, said in a statement.
Kevin Guthrie, head of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said Friday that on-site lawyer visits “should be starting” Monday, and that they did not begin earlier because of technology problems.
Environmental groups have also sued to halt construction of the detention center, which is surrounded by protected lands. Guthrie was dismissive about environmental concerns at the news conference. He claimed that the facility, an old training airport, used to have “over a hundred flights a day,” a detail that it was not possible to immediately confirm.
The state is using the old airfield, which belongs to Miami-Dade County, under emergency powers. On Friday, the county’s mayor, Daniella Levine Cava, renewed her request to state officials to brief county officials on the detention center and provide them with access to conduct oversight.
“The county received no formal communication from your office prior to the development and deployment of this facility, and repeated efforts to seek transparency have been ignored or rebuffed,” she wrote in a letter to Guthrie. “Our residents deserve full accountability for operations taking place on county-owned property.”
Florida officials raced to build the center last month, justifying its remote, swampy location in part by saying that deportation flights would be able to take off from there. “There’s an 11,000-foot runway, which will enable large planes to come in and out and can carry hundreds and hundreds of people,” James Uthmeier, the state’s Republican attorney general, told Fox News on June 25.
DeSantis said the detention center has a current capacity of “a couple thousand” detainees. Guthrie said state officials planned to grow that capacity to about 4,000. If the facility becomes more full, DeSantis reiterated his plans for the state to open a second detention center in North Florida.
The DeSantis administration has sought to deputize Judge Advocate General Corps officers from the Florida National Guard to serve as immigration judges at the Everglades center, in an effort to fast-track deportations. DeSantis said the federal government has not yet given the state that approval.
Detainees have reported poor conditions inside the detention center, including insufficient food and infrequent showers. In testy exchanges with several news reporters, DeSantis and Guthrie defended the conditions, with DeSantis mocking detainees for wanting “toasted hoagies.”
Florida has also developed a pilot program to encourage immigrants in the country illegally to self-deport, Larry Keefe, the executive director of a new state board overseeing immigration issues, told the board Tuesday. The board comprises DeSantis; Uthmeier; Blaise Ingoglia, the state’s chief financial officer, and Wilton Simpson, the state’s agriculture commissioner.
Florida’s self-deportation initiative, in partnership with Customs and Border Protection, is distinct from a federal program that offers immigrants in the country illegally a $1,000 cash stipend and a plane ticket to fly to their home country, Keefe said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2025 The New York Times
