Trump admin. moving detainees out of "Alligator Alcatraz" after judge orders facility operations to wind down

Source: CBS News

Updated on: August 27, 2025 / 11:01 PM EDT


The Department of Homeland Security has begun moving detainees out of a controversial, state-run immigration detention center in the middle of the Florida Everglades dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz," days after a federal judge ruled that parts of the facility must be dismantled.

The detainees are being transferred to other immigration detention centers, DHS said in a statement Wednesday, blaming a court order from an "activist judge" that it called "another attempt to prevent the President from fulfilling the American people's mandate to remove the worst of the worst."

"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," DHS said in a statement to CBS News. Earlier Wednesday, The Associated Press reported a top Florida emergency official had told a South Florida rabbi last week that Alligator Alcatraz would likely be empty "within a few days."

The facility, run by Florida's state government on a largely abandoned airstrip, is part of a wider push by the Trump administration to ramp up the number of immigration detention beds by partnering with Republican-led states willing to aid its escalating mass deportation efforts.

Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-admin-moving-detainees-alligator-alcatraz-judge-florida/