MIAMI: The controversial “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration detention centre — a costly Florida facility that became a symbol of US President Donald Trump’s deportation drive — has shut down after less than a year in operation, officials said on Thursday.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, appearing at the remote Everglades site with White House border czar Tom Homan, said the facility no longer held any detainees and had fulfilled the emergency role it was built to serve.

The facility drew fierce criticism from lawyers, families, civil rights groups and human rights advocates, who accused the government of holding detainees in harsh conditions and denying them meaningful due process.

“Alligator Alcatraz fulfilled the role that it was designed to serve,” DeSantis said, adding that it had helped remove “many, many dangerous people” from Florida and the United States.

The detention centre opened in July 2025 at a sparsely used airstrip, quickly built by Florida officials to help the Trump administration process migrants during a sharp expansion of immigration enforcement.

DeSantis said in May that more than 22,000 people had been processed or staged for deportation through the site.

Officials said the last detainees had either been transferred to other centres or deported, after federal and state authorities initially described the removals as a safety measure linked to the start of hurricane season.

Vendors hired to operate the site had been told to begin full demobilisation, according to US media reports, bringing down the curtain on an experiment once promoted by Trump and DeSantis as a possible model for other states.

Environmental advocates and the Miccosukee Tribe challenged the project, saying construction at the isolated Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport had damaged the fragile Everglades ecosystem and threatened protected species.

The site’s cost became another flashpoint. Estimates put the price tag at more than $1 billion, and the federal government has approved hundreds of millions of dollars in reimbursement, though Florida has not yet been fully repaid.

Published in Dawn, June 26 , 2026