Alligator Alcatraz's last days? DHS says it's following judge's shutdown order

MIAMI — A week after a federal judge ordered the state and federal governments to begin shutting down their operations at Alligator Alcatraz, workers are being sent packing and detainees are being moved to other facilities.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, in a news conference in Orange County on Wednesday, said the Department of Homeland Security had “increased the pace of removals” from the detention facility. DeSantis distanced the state from the decisions about who is detained at the site, saying “the state does not determine who goes into the facility.”

“And so ultimately, it’s DHS’s decision, where they want to process and stage detainees, and it’s their decision about when they want to bring them out,” DeSantis said.

“But I think they’ve been having rapid removals from Alligator Alcatraz, and I think that’s caused the census to go down,” he told reporters.

His comments follow an Aug. 22 email from Kevin Guthrie, the executive director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, signaling that the government was already adhering to the federal judge’s order issued the prior day. In a response to a Rabbi’s request to provide chaplain services, Guthrie said, “We are probably going to be down to 0 individuals within a few days.”

DeSantis told reporters that Guthrie’s comments were about the speed at which the Department of Homeland Security was deporting detainees from the makeshift facility.

A Department of Homeland Security official said U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams, who was appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama, was an “activist judge” and her preliminary injunction “ignores the fact that this land has already been developed for a decade.”

“DHS is complying with this order and moving detainees to other facilities. We will continue to fight tooth-and-nail to remove the worst of the worst from American streets,” the DHS official said in a statement. “We have the law, the facts, and common sense on our side.”

Williams granted a preliminary injunction last week, giving a win to environmental groups that claimed the temporary detention center was causing irreparable harm to the environment, and that it was constructed without a proper environmental review under federal law. The order gradually shuts down operations at the detention facility in the Everglades that has been marred by several lawsuits, protests and complaints of civil rights violations from detainees and their lawyers.

Emails shared with the Herald also show that contractors at the site had already begun furloughing employees prior to Williams’s order.

On Aug. 13, after Williams issued an initial ruling stopping expansion efforts at Alligator Alcatraz, an email from GardaWorld Federal Services explained that Florida’s Division of Emergency Management was “reducing overall staffing housed on-site levels.” GardaWorld Federal Services received a $37 million contract to provide “TNT ancillary support services,” according to the state’s contract database.

“As a result, approximately 100 team members will be placed on furlough, effective on or around August 15, 2025,” the email said.

On Aug. 22, after the judge’s preliminary injunction ruling, the company sent another email, furloughing more employees and explaining that FDEM was “reducing overall staffing.”

“As a result, approximately 322 team members will be placed on furlough, effective on or around August 23, 2025,” the email said.

GardaWorld Federal Services referred the Herald to FDEM for any comments.

Neither the governor’s office nor the Florida Division of Emergency Management commented on the number of detainees currently at the site.

The fight to keep the detention site open

Williams, on Wednesday, again sided with the environmental groups and the Miccosukee Tribe, denying the government’s expedited motion to pause her order. In the ruling, Williams stated that the government’s argument was repetitive, drawing from the hearings on the case, and that the environmental groups were likely to succeed in their lawsuit filed in June, which claimed that the government had bypassed environmental regulations in rushing to build the site.

“The Court found Plaintiffs’ and the public’s interest in preventing these harms outweighed Defendants’ interest in continuing to operate the detention facility while undergoing the NEPA review process, given that Defendants ‘offered little to no evidence why this detention camp, in this particular location, is uniquely suited and critical’ to Defendants’ immigration enforcement mission,” Williams stated in Wednesday’s ruling denying the government’s expedited motion.

The government had asked the judge to pause her preliminary injunction order pending the decision of their appeal in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Lawyers for the Department of Homeland Security, in their request, said that the order would disrupt the federal government’s ability to enforce immigration law.

Garrett Ripa, the Miami field office director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the detention center had been “instrumental” in helping the government’s mass deportation efforts and reduced overcrowding at ICE detention facilities in Florida.

“Before its establishment, ERO Miami faced significant overcrowding in its detention facilities, which placed the government in a challenging position to ensure compliance with ICE detention standards,” Ripa’s statement said.

In their response to the request to pause the order, lawyers for the environmental groups and the Miccosukee Tribe stated that the government had already begun reducing its reliance on the detention prior to the judge’s preliminary injunction ruling. They said the government’s arguments on reliance on the site were “disingenuous.”

“Winding down operations at the detention center pursuant to the injunction order will not cause any measurable harm to the Defendants; it will merely continue what Defendants have already been doing for weeks, and what was planned all along,” the lawyers said in an opposition motion filed Monday.

Florida U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost, in a statement to the court in support of the environmental groups, said when he visited the facility on Aug. 20, there were approximately 350 detainees at the site.

“In response to my questions about who determines who comes in and out of the site, and how long individuals are held there, the deputy FDEM incident commander Tim said that ‘ICE controls it, not us.’ The CRS employee likewise indicated that ICE decides everything,” Frost’s court statement said.

In the preliminary injunction issued last week, Williams demanded that the state and federal governments halt all activity that expanded the detention site, including the addition of new pavements, industrial lighting, and tents or dormitories. Williams ruled that no new detainee be brought to the site and expected that within 60 days, the site would be largely stripped and shut down.

The state filed a notice to appeal right after the order limiting its operations at Alligator Alcatraz. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals has assigned a docket number for the case, and the state has 14 days to file its arguments on the merits of the appeal.

In the Wednesday press conference, DeSantis stated that there was a demand for additional detention facilities. He said the state was working to find more, in addition to the Baker Correctional Institution in North Florida —capable of housing up to 2,000 detainees.

“Our role is to provide more space for processing, detention, leading into the deportation,” DeSantis said. “DHS determines who goes into those facilities and who goes out of those facilities.”