Deportation flights, lawsuits and expansion: What's next for Alligator Alcatraz?

MIAMI — The tents, beds and pens have been erected in the Florida Everglades, and hundreds of migrants have been shipped to the detention facility the state is calling Alligator Alcatraz.

Now what?

The site, built in eight days on a municipal airstrip located within the Big Cypress National Preserve, is part of a larger plan to expand detention space as President Donald Trump tries to deport millions of immigrants who the government says are in the country illegally. Eventually, Alligator Alcatraz is supposed to serve what the governor describes as a “quick processing center,” where detainees are sent and then swiftly deported — directly from an airstrip on site.

But while hundreds of people are already being held there, the state’s pop-up detention center — criticized by attorneys and detainees for poor conditions and legal access— isn’t yet fully operational.

Here’s the latest on what is happening at Alligator Alcatraz, and what is coming down the pike.

Deportation flights

Alligator Alcatraz detainees are already being deported, according to Gov. Ron DeSantis and a spokeswoman for the Florida Division of Emergency Management, which is overseeing the facility.

“Deportations of Alligator Alcatraz detainees have begun and remain ongoing,” DEM Spokeswoman Stephanie Hartman wrote Monday in an email to the Herald.

But it’s unclear whether that means deportation flights are taking off from the airway at the seized Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, or from elsewhere. Also unclear is how many detainees have been deported.

Hartman did not respond to follow-up questions, and DeSantis did not elaborate on Wednesday while discussing the latest at the site with reporters in Tampa.

The Department of Homeland Security “has started moving in a significant number of people and they’re starting to deport people from there too,” DeSantis said. “The reality is it’s there to be a quick processing center … We have a runway right there. They can just be flown back to their home country.”

Planes are landing daily at the facility, according to the flight tracking site FlightAware. But neither the state or federal government have announced that deportation flights have departed from the runway, and FlightAware shows that the most recent flights that have taken off from Dade-Collier Training Airport have been private planes owned by an investment firm and a land surveyor. Those flights have been to and from the detention center and locations within Florida.

Either way, state officials say the plan is for detainees to be quickly deported. On Saturday, Democratic lawmakers who received a tour of the facility said that Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie told them detainees at the site are meant to be deported within two weeks of their arrival. The site opened exactly two weeks ago, on July 2. The Division of Emergency Management did not respond when asked about the two week timeline.

Plans for expansion

Plans for Alligator Alcatraz showed that the site is expected to be built to hold 3,000 detainees. For now, the number of detainees at the site appears to be below 1,000, based on reports from staff and lawmakers.

Lawmakers were shown a “new” dorm on Saturday without any detainees inside, implying the facility — consisting of trailers and tents — has additional capacity.

This is the first of several state detention centers planned to house undocumented immigrants. Another detention facility is planned at Camp Blanding, a Clay County training site for the Florida National Guard. It could hold up to 3,000 people with more infrastructure, DeSantis said Wednesday. Similar to Alligator Alcatraz, Camp Blanding has an airstrip.

The state has already sent out a request for contractors to submit proposals to establish a Camp Blanding detention center, DeSantis said. But he said he doesn’t want to begin work until Alligator Alcatraz is “filled.”

“Once there’s a demand, then we’ll be able to go for Camp Blanding,” DeSantis said.

Legal hearings

An important element of the DeSantis administration’s plans for Alligator Alcatraz, and the state’s role in housing immigrant detainees, is for Florida National Guard Judge Advocate General Corps officers to act as immigration judges, alleviating the crunch created in U.S. immigration courts by the crush of cases. According to the state’s proposed immigration plan from earlier this year, there are nine officers who could be trained as immigration judges. Training would take six weeks, the plan stated.

As of now, though, the Florida National Guard hasn’t been given “formal tasking” when it comes to officers serving as judges, spokeswoman Brittianie Funderbunk wrote Monday in an email to the Herald.

In the meantime, attorneys have said they have been thwarted in their efforts to visit and contact their clients detained at the site. Some have said they have been unable to file legal briefs due to confusion about whether detainees are in the custody of the state or the federal government.

But at least some Alligator Alcatraz detainees have had bond hearings, held at Krome Immigration Court this week, according to their attorneys. Krome’s immigration court facilities, which exist on site, are the closest to Alligator Alcatraz.

Lawsuits

Critics frustrated with the creation and operation of Alligator Alcatraz have filed two lawsuits.

One, filed by nonprofits Friends of the Everglades, Center for Biological Diversity and Earthjustice, focuses on the environmental impact of Alligator Alcatraz. The groups are accusing both the state of Florida and various federal agencies of dodging federal environmental regulations to build the facility, built hastily within the Big Cypress National Preserve.

The Miccosukee Tribe filed a motion Monday to join the suit, which seeks to stop the continued operation of the detention center and further construction at the site until a full environmental review can be conducted. The federal lawsuit is pending before the Southern District of Florida.

The other suit comes from a group of five Democratic state lawmakers who were denied access to the facility on July 3 when they made an unannounced visit.

Sens. Shevrin Jones and Carlos Guillermo Smith, and state Reps. Anna Eskamani, Angie Nixon and Michele Rayner say denying them unannounced access to the facility is against the law, because members of the Florida legislature are supposed to have the ability to inspect state correctional institutions “at their pleasure.” The state argues Alligator Alcatraz is not a correctional institution because it’s not being run by the Department of Corrections.

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