Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has revealed that deportation flights have begun to depart from a remote detention facility known as Alligator Alcatraz, as the Republican leader seeks to put his state at the forefront of President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda.
Speaking from the south Florida site on Friday, DeSantis framed his efforts as a model for other states seeking to partner with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
“I’m pleased to report that those flights out of Alligator Alcatraz by DHS have begun,” DeSantis told reporters.
“ The reality is this provides an ability to enhance the mission, to increase the number and frequency of deportations. And so what’s been done here has really been remarkable.”
A representative for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Garrett Ripa, also confirmed that “two or three removal flights” had already been conducted from the Alligator Alcatraz facility and that more were planned.
He indicated that those flights contained “ up to a hundred individuals who were illegally present in the state of Florida”.
Delegating resources
President Trump campaigned for re-election last November on the promise that he would undertake the “largest deportation operation in American history”.
But with more than 11 million undocumented people believed to be living in the United States, critics have pointed out that his ambitions may outstrip the amount of detention space and resources the government has available.
That has led the Trump administration to seek additional resources from state and local authorities, as well as assistance from foreign governments.
He has also deployed the military to assist in immigration enforcement operations, a task traditionally outside its scope.
Part of Trump’s toolkit has been deputising state and local leaders through Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
While the federal government is solely responsible for immigration enforcement, Section 287(g) creates a loophole that allows ICE to enter into written agreements with state and local authorities to perform specific immigration-related functions.
Speaking alongside DeSantis on Friday, Larry Keefe, the head of Florida’s newly established State Board of Immigration Enforcement, said his team has already taken advantage of such arrangements.
“Just within the last couple of days, the federal government has issued credentials to over 1,200 Florida sheriff’s deputies and over 650 FDLE [Florida Department of Law Enforcement] agents and other state and local law enforcement agencies,” Keefe said.
“We have more than doubled our capability and capacity to effect arrests.”
Florida at the forefront
Florida, however, has been testing the limits of what it is able to do independently in terms of cracking down on undocumented immigration within its state lines.
Earlier this year, for instance, the Florida’s Republican-led government passed a law, known as SB 4-C (PDF), that imposes stiff criminal penalties on adult undocumented immigrants who knowingly enter the state.
But federal courts placed an injunction to prevent the law from taking effect, on the basis that it preempts the federal government’s authority over all things immigration.
Still, President Trump has hailed the aggressive immigration efforts in Florida, his adopted home state, where he maintains a residence, Mar-a-Lago, as well as golf courses.
Earlier this month, he visited Alligator Alcatraz, applauding its fast-paced construction. “This is what you need,” Trump said at the time. “A lot of bodyguards and a lot of cops in the form of alligators.”
Critics have denounced the facility as an exercise in cruelty, with reports emerging of poor conditions inside Alligator Alcatraz. Some immigrants have said they faced floodwater, poor sanitation, clogged toilets and clouds of mosquitoes as they stayed in fenced-in units where the lights were never dimmed.
Environmental groups and Indigenous members of the local Seminole and Miccosukee tribes have also criticised the facility for its location in the middle of the Everglades wetlands, a sensitive ecosystem prone to seasonal flooding.
Utilising an old airfield
Built across eight days in June, Alligator Alcatraz sits atop the site of the former Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport in Ochopee, Florida.
That set-up has been a benefit for plans to also use the facility for deportation flights, DeSantis said on Friday. He described transferring immigrants from their detention cells to planes with relative ease.
“One of the reasons why this was a sensible spot is because you have this runway that’s right here,” DeSantis explained.
“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.”
He added that the site already has runway lighting and 18,927 litres — or 5,000 gallons — of jet fuel on site. That, he hopes, will help pave the way for the number of deportation flights to increase in the coming weeks.
“ The cadence is increasing,” DeSantis said. “We’ve already had a number of flights in the last few days.”
Alligator Alcatraz — named for a forbidding island prison in the San Francisco Bay that closed in the 1960s — has the capacity to hold up to 3,000 people, according to Florida officials.
DeSantis has long positioned Florida as the “blueprint” for what Republican leadership in the US could look like, and in 2023, he launched a short-lived presidential campaign to challenge Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
Increasing the pace
In his remarks on Friday, DeSantis briefly acknowledged the shortcomings in Trump’s mass-deportation plans, playing up the efficiency of the Alligator Alcatraz system.
“ICE has been understaffed — you know, is not scratching the surface of what would need to be done to get to where you have the largest mass deportation in history,” he said.
“So you’ve got to increase that tempo. You have a limited amount of time to do it. I think we’ve got to assume we’ve got these four years under the Trump administration to really get the job done.”
DeSantis also brushed aside concerns that the isolated facility cuts immigrants off from their legal representation and their right to be heard before a court.
He pointed out that he plans to have immigration judges on site. But he also questioned whether undocumented people should be allowed the same due process rights as US citizens and immigrants with legal status.
“To me, it’s like, if you are subjected to a traditional criminal process, there’s a whole a bunch of due process that goes into that,” DeSantis said.
By contrast, DeSantis argued that the immigration process “should be a pretty simple process. You either have a right to be here or you don’t.”