Tag Archives: Alligator

Guards at Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration jail deployed teargas and engaged in a mass beating of detainees to quell a mini-uprising, it was reported on Friday. The allegations, made by at least three detainees in phone calls to Miami’s Spanish language news channel Noticias 23, come as authorities race to empty the camp in compliance with a judge’s order to …

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Florida taxpayers could be on the hook for $218 million the state spent to convert a remote training airport in the Everglades into an immigration detention center dubbed “ Alligator Alcatraz.” The center may soon be completely empty as a judge upheld her decision late Wednesday ordering operations to wind down indefinitely. Shutting down the facility …

Beds are seen inside a migrant detention center, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” located at the site of the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, in Ochopee, Florida on July 1, 2025. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images MIAMI — The immigration detention center in Florida’s Everglades that officials have dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” soon will …

A nonverbal New Orleans boy who disappeared earlier this month was found dead Tuesday and appears to have died in part from an alligator attack, officials said. New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said Wednesday that Bryan Vasquez, 12, drowned after suffering blunt force trauma from an alligator. His body was found in a lagoon in the city’s Michoud neighborhood, …

The Department of Homeland Security has begun moving detainees out of a controversial, state-run immigration detention center in the middle of the Florida Everglades dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” days after a federal judge ruled that parts of the facility must be dismantled. The detainees are being transferred to other immigration detention centers, DHS said in a statement Wednesday, blaming a court …

A missing 12-year-old boy with autism likely died following an alligator attack, police said Wednesday. A nearly two-week-long search resulted in his body being found in a New Orleans canal this week. Bryan Vasquez was first reported missing on the morning of Aug. 14, after he reportedly escaped through a bedroom window on the East side of the city, the …

Florida’s immigration jail known as “Alligator Alcatraz” will probably be empty of detainees within days, a state official has said, indicating compliance with a judge’s order last week that the facility must close. The Republican governor Ron DeSantis’s administration appealed the order by federal court judge Kathleen Williams that the tented detention camp in the Florida Everglades, which attracted criticism …

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A top Florida official says the controversial state-run immigration detention facility in the Everglades will likely be empty in a matter of days, even as Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration and the federal government fight a judge’s order to shutter the facility dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” by late October. That’s according to an email exchange shared with …

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A top Florida official says the controversial state-run immigration detention facility in the Everglades will likely be empty in a matter of days, even as Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration and the federal government fight a judge’s order to shutter the facility dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” by late October. That’s according to an email exchange shared with …

Calling it “exactly the kind of disaster that Congress took pains to avoid,” attorneys for immigrants held at a detention center in the Everglades filed a lawsuit alleging Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration lacks the authority to run the facility. The lawsuit, filed Friday in the federal court’s Middle District of Florida, is the third major legal challenge to the detention …