Deportation flights from the makeshift South Florida immigration detention facility dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” have begun as a “surge” of immigration arrests is on the horizon, state officials said.
“What has been done here has been remarkable,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said Friday at the controversial tent city the state built quickly to support the sweeping deportation agenda that helped propel President Donald Trump to a second term but is largely opposed by Americans.
“We’ve had two or three removal flights, and we’ll continue to have those removal flights. Up to 100 individuals who were illegally present in the state of Florida have already been removed from the United States,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Garrett J. Ripa said.
It is unclear where the flights from the Everglades facility ended up.
“We now have capacity for a couple of thousand. We can expand that as demand is there,” added Ripa, ICE’s acting executive associate director. “There is not a person here (at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’) that is not on a final removal order.”
Asked whether ICE is operating the flights, how many have been completed and how many people were on board, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told CNN:
“Fire up the deportation planes.”
For those not flown out, conditions at the detention camp are poor, its detainees have told CNN, with over 30 people held in cells made of chain-link fencing and few bathrooms available. One called the facility “a type of torture,” while another at a news conference this week said it was being “like a dog cage.”
Detainees also have limited access to water and showers and have dealt with toilets backing up, air conditioning going out and tents letting in rain and insects, they’ve told CNN. Lawmakers who have toured the facility have given matching descriptions, and lawsuits aimed at its environmental impact and detainees’ access to legal counsel have been filed.
Pushing back, a state official Friday said the facility “meets or exceeds” the highest stands for detention. And after “some technology issues” related to legal counsel, “we have now worked those things out,” with access expected to start Monday, said Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie said.
‘Surge’ of arrests coming, official vows
The deportation flights mark “a new day,” the head of the State Board of Immigration Enforcement said, adding, “There will be a surge of arrests, and what you see here at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ and what’s to follow on detention capacity will be here to meet that surge.”
Florida in recent days more than doubled its capacity to arrest undocumented people, marking an intensification of its immigration enforcement operations, Larry Keefe said at Friday’s news conference.
The federal government has granted credentials allowing for limited immigration enforcement to over 1,200 Florida deputies and more than 650 agents from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, along with personnel from state and local agencies, he added.
Florida leads the nation in the number of partnerships between state and local agencies and ICE under the federal 287(g) program.
The governor on Friday lauded the deportation effort, including the flights: “Hey, this is our moment,” DeSantis said. “This is what we all campaigned on. Let’s get it done.”
28,000 feet of fence and some 300 cameras
About an hour’s drive by two-lane road from Trump’s Miami resort, “Alligator Alcatraz” was built in just eight days by workers who remade the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport from one built to serve supersonic jets with an 11,000-foot runway and a few small building into a temporary tent city for house thousands.
Security now includes 28,000 feet of fencing, nearly 300 security cameras, a “trained force of over 400 securities personal, including additional 200 National Guard” personnel, Guthrie said Friday, adding it is “surrounded by … I believe it is 39 square miles of natural buffer,” referring to the Everglades.
As hurricane season’s peak approaches, families of those at the site are concerned about weather threats. While the facility can withstand winds of up to Category 2 strength, it must be evacuated if a stronger hurricane threatens, Guthrie has said.
“It will depend on the path of the storm,” DeSantis said Friday. “This ain’t our first rodeo. We know in Florida anything is susceptible to have to be evacuated.”
Countering complaints by some detainees’ relatives of scant health resources, “we have on this facility the ability of a full-fledge medical center,” Guthrie added. “We have a medical doctor on site, we (have a) nurse practitioner on site, we have RN and complete medical staff on site.”
CNN Priscilla Alvarez contributed to this report.
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