A federal immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” by the Trump administration, is shutting down nearly one year after opening, officials announced Thursday.

During a press conference on Thursday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said there were zero detainees remaining at the facility and that the remote detention center was always meant to be temporary.

“Alligator Alcatraz fulfilled the role that it was designed to serve,” the Republican governor said, adding that 21,000 people were deported through the facility. He said he expects the center to be fully dismantled in about a week or two.

Detainees had already been moved to other facilities earlier this month after the facility was temporarily shut down due to hurricane threats.

President Donald Trump and then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem joined DeSantis and other Florida state leaders for the facility’s opening on July 1, 2025. At the time, Trump said it “might be as good as the real Alcatraz,” the shuttered maximum-security federal prison off the coast of San Francisco.

Since its opening, human rights groups have decried unsanitary conditions and torture-like treatment at the facility. Detainees reportedly described worms in the food, toilets overflowing with fecal matter, and cells teeming with mosquitoes.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a lawsuit in August 2025 seeking to shut down the facility, has accused the center of being “a moral failure, an environmental threat, and a fiscal disaster.”

Environmental and Native American groups, including the Miccosukee Tribe, also opposed the facility, which they said was built on sacred land and jeopardized an already ecologically delicate landscape, endangering wildlife and the local fresh drinking-water supply.

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