Advocates demand inquiry into Florida’s recently closed Alligator Alcatraz detention center

While they welcome the recent closure of the controversial Alligator Alcatraz migrant detention center, leading environmental groups and their allies say they want an independent investigation into the environmental damage the facility inflicted on the surrounding wilderness during its 12 months of operations. Those groups made that demand alongside immigrant-rights advocates and members of Florida’s Miccosukee Tribe at a news conference on Friday outside the entrance to the shuttered detention center, where the Friends of the Everglades (FOE) executive director, Eve Samples, condemned the camp as a “failure, an obscene waste of taxpayer dollars and an abuse of the Everglades”. Samples’ comments came after her non-profit filed a lawsuit in June 2025 seeking to halt construction at Alligator Alcatraz. The Miccosukee Tribe joined the FOE lawsuit to defend tribal rights, having villages located near the $608m facility meant to detain undocumented immigrants during the second Trump administration’s ongoing immigration crackdown. Trump administration officials had repeatedly denied requests by environmental organizations and other concerned parties to gain access to the premises. But during four days of hearings in a federal courthouse in Miami during the previous August, FOE representatives presented evidence of how Alligator Alcatraz was causing significant environmental harm. …