DHS begins to fly detainees out of Alligator Alcatraz as DeSantis touts convenience of nearby airstrip

Ana Ceballos, Miami Herald on Jul 25, 2025

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla., — Gov. Ron DeSantis said Friday that the federal government has begun sending flights in and out of the airstrip that is attached to the immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades, known as Alligator Alcatraz.

The governor said the federal government has deported about 100 people who were held at the detention camp and that “hundreds” of others have been transferred to deportation hubs in other parts of the country, such as the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s staging facility in Louisiana.

“I think you’re going to see the cadence on these flights start to pick up, obviously,” DeSantis said at a news conference. “Honestly, to get to where we were at the beginning of the month, and now have flights leaving already with the facility that has been built — that’s incredible.”

Though the DeSantis administration has been saying for nearly two weeks that deportations of Alligator Alcatraz detainees were underway, the announcement that the Department of Homeland Security is now sending flights to transfer detainees to and from the facility reflects a significant milestone in the ascension of the detention center.

The state and federal governments have called the site a game-changer for Trump’s mass-deportation campaign, with the governor touting the runway at the seized Dade-Collier Training and Transition Center as a means to fast-track deportations.

“We’ve had two or three removal flights and will continue to have those removal flights. Up to 100 individuals who are illegally present in the state of Florida have already been removed from the United States,” Garret Ripa, the field office director for ICE Enforcement Removal Operations in Miami, said at Friday’s news conference.

But nearly a month into the detention camp’s operation, the governor said a key part of that plan — the use of National Guard judge advocate general corps attorneys to oversee immigration cases — has yet to launch. And he indicated that he wants the pace of flights to pick up.

“I just don’t want it to be something where people, illegals are just being stored there and they kind of sit,” DeSantis said. “I want it to be where illegals are here and there’s an aggressive processing and aggressive deportation schedule.”

Specific details about what is happening at Alligator Alcatraz remain fuzzy, even as the DeSantis administration releases new information.

At the news conference, DeSantis said there have been “100 full deportations” out of Alligator Alcatraz, but he did not say when those took place or whether people were sent directly to another country or to a staging facility for deportation. He also said that hundreds of other detainees were sent to other parts of the country to be staged for deportation — a move he said made sense given the varying nationalities of detainees at the site.

“It makes sense logistically because if we got a plane full of people with a variety of nationalities, if you go to a central hub, you pull the nationalities and send one flight to one place another flight to another place,” DeSantis told reporters on Friday. “So that is what we are doing.”

When President Donald Trump toured the detention camp in the Florida Everglades on July 1, state officials billed it as a “one-stop shop” for processing and deporting immigrants from the on-site 10,500-foot-long runway.

“One of the reasons why this was a sensible spot is because you have this runway that’s right here,” DeSantis said Friday, reiterating that goal. “You don’t have to drive them an hour to an airport. You go a couple thousand feet, and they can be on a plane and out of here.

State and federal officials did not respond to a request seeking clarification on whether any of the flights that have taken off from Alligator Alcatraz have been direct deportation flights to other countries. Officials also did not provide the names of the people who have been transferred out of the facility.

The state and federal governments have not released information about the people who have been in the deportation flights.