The name for Florida’s migrant detention center, Alligator Alcatraz, is a nod to the facility’s remote location atop an idle airstrip in the Florida Everglades teeming with alligators and pythons.
The first detainees arrived at Alligator Alcatraz on July 2, the Miami Herald reported, despite environmentalists’ efforts to halt the project.
Gov. Ron DeSantis and President Donald Trump have dismissed worries for the ecosystem. During a June 27 Boca Raton press conference, DeSantis told NBC 6 South Florida politics reporter Hatzel Vela that the facility has “zero impact” on the Everglades.
“Any sense that somehow this is going to have any impact at all on the overall Everglades,” DeSantis said, “is there’s zero impact.”
Alligator Alcatraz’s initial capacity is up to 3,000 detainees with room to expand. The housing facility, an aluminum frame structure, includes more than 158,000 square feet of space, said Kevin Guthrie, Florida Division of Emergency Management executive director. About 600 migrants were at the facility as of July 9, WPLG Local 10 reported.
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President Donald Trump tours the Alligator Alcatraz migrant detention facility at Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, July 1, 2025, in Ochopee, Fla. (AP)
Environmental groups Friends of the Everglades and Center for Biological Diversity filed a federal lawsuit June 27, arguing that the state bulldozed over federal rules for assessing environmental harm for the site situated within Big Cypress National Preservewhich neighbors Everglades National Park.
DeSantis said environmentalists’ concerns were inspired by personal ideologies against deporting migrants in the country illegally. Appearing at a July 1 roundtable at the facility, Trump said DeSantis’ project was not damaging the Everglades, “just enhancing it.”
DeSantis’s office did not provide evidence showing how state agencies or officials determined Alligator Alcatraz has zero environmental impact. The state did not conduct an environmental impact assessment before construction, making it difficult to determine with certainty.
However, environmental experts say increased human activity within a sensitive ecosystem is reason enough to be skeptical of the argument that there are “zero” consequences. They pointed to collateral damage from greater traffic in the area: habitat degradation for endangered species, such as the Florida panther, light and air pollution, risks of spills and waste management complications.
A halted airstrip project
Dade County Port Authority purchased land in the 1960s with the goal of creating the nation’s largest airport, called “Everglades Jetport.”
But the plans did not extend past the existing 10,500-foot runway following research findings from Dr. Luna B. Leopold, U.S. Geological Survey senior research hydrologist and former head of the water resources division.
Leopold’s 1969 report about the potential impacts of the jetport concluded it “will inexorably destroy the south Florida ecosystem and thus the Everglades National Park,” citing concerns related to urbanization, drainage, waste management, noise pollution and endangered species.
The report is considered the first environmental impact report for the state of Florida, alarming a coalition of conservationists and activists. As a result, they pressured port authorities to abandon the project.
Isolated Everglades airfield about 45 miles west of Miami where Florida officials say the “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration detention facility would be located. (Florida Attorney General’s Office via AP)
Harold Wanless, a University of Miami geography and regional studies professor, said the state’s downplay of environmental harms is “hiding behind the fact that there’s a concrete slab there.”
The site was abandoned decades ago “as an environmental mistake,” Wanless said. “Now it is looked at as a governmental and business opportunity — with no environmental concern.”
Habitat degradation, pollution and waste among cited concerns
PolitiFact contacted environmental lawyers and scientists unrelated to the Alligator Alcatraz case for their take on the detention facility in the wetlands.
“The governor’s statement that the project will have ‘zero impact’ on the environment is impossible to take at face value given its proximity to the Everglades, a National Preserve, and to indigenous cultural sites,” Robert Glicksman, George Washington University environmental law professor, told PolitiFact via email.
Glicksman and Justin Pidot, co-director of the University of Arizona’s Environmental Law, Science and Policy Program, agreed that concerns about light pollution, increased traffic and disruption of habitat are not too speculative as long as they are “sufficiently imminent.” They gave examples of increased air pollution from the traffic that the migrant center generates and additional light pollution from the facility’s construction and operation.
Christopher McVoy, a soil physicist and wetlands ecologist who co-authored a book about the Everglades’ pre-drainage landscape, toured Alligator Alcatraz on June 28.
McVoy referenced steady vehicle traffic going to and from the facility and called DeSantis’s claim “ludicrous.”
“I was surprised that (DeSantis) — with a straight face — said ‘zero impact,’” McVoy said in a phone interview.
Betty Osceola with the Miccosukee tribe of Indians addresses environmental advocates and other protesters at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport on Tamiami Trail E, Ochopee, Fla.,on June 28, 2025. (AP)
Court declarations by McVoy and private pilot Ralph Arwood include aerial photographs taken by Arwood on July 5 showing “newly paved (asphalted) area” and “several areas of new road construction.”
McVoy reviewed Arwood’s photos, saying that approximately 11 acres of new pavement was laid down, extending the pre-existing airstrip. He compared Arwood’s photographs with Google Earth imagery prior to Alligator Alcatraz.
The Florida Division of Emergency Management maintains that Alligator Alcatraz did not involve additional development.
“The area referenced consisted of a preexisting cement pad that was installed more than 50 years ago. Over time, a thin layer of dirt and grass had settled on top,” Florida Division of Emergency Management spokesperson Stephanie Hartman told PolitiFact in an email.
Big Cypress National Preserve is home to endangered and threatened species including wood storks, Florida panthers, bonneted bats and Everglades snail kites. Increased vehicle traffic and degraded wildlife habitats, along with light, water, air and noise pollutants are among potential harms to the area as a result of Alligator Alcatraz construction, said Alisa Coe, deputy managing attorney for Earthjustice, one of the groups suing to stop the detention center.
Advocates are particularly worried about the official state animal, the Florida panther, with an estimated 120 to 230 adult panthers remaining today. Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission data show that panthers have visited the site over the years, with the most recent visit from a radio-collared panther near the site occurring in 2014.
In addition, Big Cypress became a designated International Dark Sky Place in 2016. Earning the accreditation is a rigorous process with the U.S. National Park Service and involves outdoor lighting guidelines to preserve darkness, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
Regulating light pollution is important for the Florida panther and other nocturnal species, Coe said.
The lawsuit included photos of high-intensity lighting units, portable generators and dump trucks with covered cargo on the site. The photos, which originally appeared in the Miami Heraldshow Sunbelt light towers transported to the site via truck.
Detainees of Alligator Alcatraz, who have reported concerns about living conditionssaid the lights are on at the facility at all times.
Using NASA Worldview, PolitiFact constructed a map comparing nighttime satellite imagery before and after Alligator Alcatraz. Aerial images from July 9 show glowing activity amid darkness where the facility is located.
NASA satellite imagery from June 17 to July 9 shows anthropogenic, or human-produced, sources of light emissions at the Alligator Alcatraz site following construction. (NASA Worldview)
Increased human activity in an area that previously didn’t have plumbing also brings concerns about waste and potential spills.
DeSantis praised the site’s waste management plan at the roundtable, saying “wastewater gets trucked out” with “potable water” coming in.
Wastewater will be plumbed to 22,000-gallon tanks. Potable water will arrive onsite via 2,000-gallon and 6,000-gallon tanker trucks.
Per the waste management plan, solid waste will be swapped daily by haulers.
“It’s totally outrageous for an environmental governor that claims to be an environmental proponent to be doing this,” said Michael Ross, an ecologist and Florida International University professor.
As he signed the 2025-26 state budget in late June, DeSantis touted more than $800 million in Everglades restoration.
Legal challenge still playing out
The environmental groups’ lawsuit said the state, using DeSantis’ emergency powersillegally bypassed environmental reviews, which they contend are required under the National Environmental Protection Act, or NEPA, for federal projects.
“‘Zero impact’ isn’t a legal concept under NEPA,” Pidot told PolitiFact via email. The law distinguishes between “significant impacts” and “insignificant ones.”
At the heart of the legal dispute is whether the federal government is involved.
Glicksman told PolitiFact that NEPA applies “if the state is building the center under an agreement with an agency of the federal government, the federal government is actually supervising the construction (i.e., the state is acting as an agent of ICE, DHS, or some other federal agency), or the federal government is partly financing the project.”
It’s not clear if or when the federal government will contribute financing, as DeSantis has said.
RELATED: Florida’s ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ immigration detention center isn’t funded by FEMA hurricane money
Attorneys for the state filed a 22-page response June 30 asking U.S. District Judge Jose Martinez to turn down the environmental groups’ request for a temporary restraining order, arguing that Alligator Alcatraz is a state project.
NEPA applies only for federal projects. Attorneys said Florida is acting independently of federal agencies and that environmental groups failed to show Alligator Alcatraz would invoke “irreparable harm” to the environment.
So far, the judge has not ruled on the case.
Our ruling
DeSantis said Alligator Alcatraz has “zero” environmental impact on the Florida Everglades.
Failing to conduct an environmental assessment does not mean harms do not exist.
Ecological experts said his statement is not plausible given the facility’s location in an extremely sensitive ecosystem and the light, air and waste water pollution associated with an infusion of trucks and people. DeSantis did not provide evidence showing how state agencies or officials determined Alligator Alcatraz has zero environmental impact.
Alligator Alcatraz has led to increased human activity in a remote location. The increased activity poses pollution, habitat degradation and waste management concerns in the sensitive ecosystem. NASA satellite imagery shows anthropogenic, or human-produced, sources of light emissions at the Alligator Alcatraz site following construction.
This fact-check does not specify the extent to which Alligator Alcatraz has an environmental impact, as that is inconclusive. Rather, contending the facility has no consequences is implausible.
We rate this claim False.
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