The Trump administration is quietly trying to shut down the controversial Florida immigration center known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” a hallmark of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s tenure.
Officials at DHS have determined that the detention center in the Everglades—which has been plagued by allegations of human rights abuses—is also too expensive to continue operating, according to The New York Times.
A pet project of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, “Alligator Alcatraz” is the first state-owned and operated detention center in the United States. But the facility, which Noem once touted as a “cost-saving effort,” is reportedly costing the state $1 million a day.
DHS and the DeSantis administration did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In April, the detention center held almost 1,400 detainees, federal data shows. About two-thirds of the inmates are “noncriminal,” meaning they are held in detention without being convicted of a crime.
The facility’s closure would be a major blow to Noem, who was ousted from her role in March after starring in a controversial ad campaign that cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.
During her time in office, the 54-year-old heralded “Alligator Alcatraz” as the first of many state-run detention centers across the country—a vision echoed by President Donald Trump.
The president visited and praised the facility, encouraging other states to replicate it as his administration grappled with a shortage of detention space amid its immigration crackdown.
The former South Dakota governor repeatedly claimed that building more detention centers would come at a “much less per-bed cost than what some of the previous contracts under the Department of Homeland Security were.”
In reality, the center, which hastily opened on July 3, is projected to cost roughly $450 million annually to operate. Florida is supposed to receive federal reimbursement, but the funds have been delayed.
The center has brought more than just steep costs to the Sunshine State. “Alligator Alcatraz” has also sparked national outrage amid allegations of assaults, groping, and inhumane living conditions.
In December, an Amnesty International report found that guards at the Everglades detention center punished detainees by confining them in what inmates call “the box,” a 2-by-2-foot cage-like structure where their hands and feet are shackled to the ground, leaving them unable to sit or move. The CIA used a similar torture method at its post-9/11 black sites, including on Abu Zubaydah, the longest-held prisoner in the U.S. war on terrorism and the first detainee waterboarded by the agency.
“It’s a copy of Guantánamo,” a Cuban man who was detained there for 11 days told Amnesty International. “The conditions are inhuman.”
The international organization also decried the use of the “box” as “torture.”
As a result, multiple lawsuits have been filed over the treatment of detainees at the center, and human rights groups have not been the only critics.
In August, a federal judge ordered the facility shut down over environmental concerns, ruling that the state violated federal law by constructing the compound—massive tents erected on an abandoned airstrip with giant cages holding 35 to 38 inmates—without conducting the required environmental assessments.
