The 'Alligator Alcatraz' Immigrant Detainment Facility Set Up by Trump and DeSantis Is Operating Like a Black Site Free From Any Oversight or Accountability

Jul 30, 2025

There are new stories of detainees being abused in ICE detention, as well as at least one minor being held at an adult detention camp in Florida called “Alligator Alcatraz”—a name chosen to emphasize the cruelty of the facility. But it turns out this prison has no legal status and is effectively a “black site” whose inmates disappear outside the reach of the law.

The Miami Herald reports:

A federal judge in Miami is expected to hear arguments Monday from attorneys who say the Trump and DeSantis administrations are holding detainees at Alligator Alcatraz without charges and without access to immigration courts in violation of their constitutional rights.
Questioning the very legality of the state-run detention center, the attorneys said in a legal filing Friday that immigrants held at the site are unable to challenge their detention because there is no federal immigration court overseeing their cases—even though the complex of tents and trailers has been operating for nearly a month. …
The plaintiffs, which include the American Civil Rights Union Foundation and Americans for Immigrant Justice, said judges at Krome Immigration Court in Miami are canceling court hearings because the court does not have jurisdiction over detainees at Alligator Alcatraz. They said ICE officers are also saying they aren’t responsible for detainees at the facility, which the DeSantis administration erected in eight days on a remote airfield in the Everglades. “This is an unprecedented situation where hundreds of detainees are held incommunicado, with no ability to access the courts, under legal authority that has never been explained and may not exist,” they argued.

This question is all the more urgent in light of the administration’s directive for FEMA to spend $600 million to replicate “Alligator Alcatraz” in other states, creating a string of extralegal immigration black sites across the country.

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