‘Wound down and shut down’ — Florida congressman says ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ coming to an end

The “Alligator Alcatraz” migrant lockup is slowly closing shop, flying detainees to other facilities, and emptying office cubicles, according to a Florida Democratic member of Congress who toured the center this week.

“What I saw is a facility that is being wound down and shut down,” U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost, representing the Orlando area, posted on social media minutes after wrapping up a pre-scheduled tour led by the Florida Division of Emergency Management.

“They’re not getting any new people. They’re just sending people to other facilities. There are 655 folks in it right now, when just a few weeks ago, there were 1,400 people,” Frost said.

He described a “silent” scene of dwindling staff, emptied offices, and whispers of “decompressing” the facility.

“They said everything but, ‘This place is shutting down.’”

DEM, the agency in charge of operating the Everglades center, did not respond to a request for comment from the Phoenix.

Frost’s account comes weeks after The New York Times reported that the South Florida facility would be shuttered by June — a year after construction began. Although it was always intended to be a temporary facility, concern over the center’s estimated $1 billion price tag — roughly $1 million a day according to the state — was reportedly one of the reasons for the expedited shutdown.

DeSantis and Kevin Guthrie, DEM’s executive director, however, have insisted that they’ve had no “official” communications about the federal government wrapping up operations.

Florida officials are still waiting for a $608 million reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA told state officials to expect $58 million by last Friday, but neither DEM nor FEMA have responded to questions about whether that happened.

This was Frost’s third trip to the makeshift detention center hastily built atop a largely abandoned airport deep within the Everglades. In his social media video, Frost said he witnessed officials load a flight of detainees to send to a different center, the first of two planes scheduled for Tuesday.

But what Frost found most surprising was the stark emptiness of the processing and staging center.

“The first two times I went to this facility, the processing center was packed with people being processed and staff and it was chaotic, and this time, there was nobody in there — there was maybe like two or three staff people in there, it was completely silent,” he said. Most of the offices had been emptied.

Between June 2025 and February 2026, Florida spent at least $460 million on immigration enforcement, the state’s government accountability website shows. However, that figure doesn’t represent the entire amount spent because payments often take weeks or even months to come through.

Coupled with vendors’ complaints that they haven’t been paid for their work on the facility, the bill is expected to be much higher by the center’s end.