Judge's Alligator Alcatraz ruling won't frustrate deportations, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis says

Ana Ceballos, Churchill Ndonwie and Matias Ocner, Miami Herald on Aug 22, 2025

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MIAMI — Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration is planning to challenge a federal court ruling that would all but shut down the operations at Florida’s makeshift immigration detention camp in the Everglades within the next 60 days, an outcome that could set back the state’s immigration enforcement efforts.

At a news conference on Friday, DeSantis said the federal judge presiding over the case did not give the government a “fair shake” and said the state would “respond accordingly.”

“This was preordained, very much an activist judge that is trying to do policy from the bench,” he told reporters. “This is not going to deter us.”

The governor’s comments came less than a day after U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams ordered the state to stop taking in immigrant detainees at the Everglades detention camp, known as Alligator Alcatraz. The site, which was the first state-run immigration detention camp in the country, would also need to move out existing detainees and remove all generators, gas, sewage, lighting and fencing within the next nine weeks. As of Thursday, there were just shy of 400 detainees at Alligator Alcatraz.

Williams’ preliminary injunction, which will hold as the case continues to be litigated, was in response to a lawsuit that was filed by environmentalists and the Miccosukee Tribe over concerns that the detention camp presents risks to the ecosystem in the Everglades. In the order, William said the site was likely to pose a threat to the surrounding environment, including endangered species like the Florida Panther and that runoff from the facility could affect tribal territory.

The Florida Division of Emergency Management, the agency that is overseeing the detention camp’s operations, has yet to file its arguments on merits for an appeal. But it has filed an intent to appeal the decision in court. The notice to appeal was filed almost immediately following Williams’ decision on Thursday night. The Eleventh Circuit Court has yet to assign a docket number to the case.

As the government works to appeal the decision, state and federal officials are publicly attributing their loss in federal court to Williams, a veteran jurist appointed by former President Barack Obama. In June, Williams held Attorney General James Uthmeier in contempt of court after he told law enforcement agencies they could ignore her order blocking the enforcement of a law that makes it illegal for undocumented immigrants to enter the state of Florida. DeSantis and Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin have both called her an “activist judge.”

“This ruling from an activist judge ignores the fact that this land has already been developed for a decade,” McLaughlin said in a statement Thursday. “It is another attempt to prevent the President from fulfilling the American people’s mandate to remove the worst of the worst including gang members, murderers, pedophiles, terrorists, and rapists from our country.”

When President Donald Trump visited the site on July 1, he said it would be a place where “vicious” criminals would be housed and then deported. But a Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times analysis found that hundreds of immigrant detainees sent to the site had no criminal convictions or pending charges in the United States. At the end of July, when the number of detainees at the site was around its peak, only one in five of the roughly 1,400 detainees at the site had been ordered removed from the country by a judge, the analysis found.

McLaughlin has called Alligator Alcatraz a “cost-effective” option offered to “assist deportations and processing of illegal aliens.” On Thursday, she said Williams “doesn’t care about the invasion of our country facilitated by the Biden administration, but the American people do.”

“We have the law, the facts, and common sense on our side.”

In Florida, DeSantis has already been making plans for another state-run immigration detention site. He announced the state would be using Baker Correctional Institution, a vacant prison in north Florida, as a second site last week, just as Williams weighed whether or not to shut down Alligator Alcatraz.

DeSantis is calling the future site, “deportation depot,” and predicts the site will be able to hold up to 2,000 detainees once it’s opened.

The state did not respond when asked when the north Florida site would become operational or whether the state would begin transferring immigrant detainees out of Alligator Alcatraz pending the appeal.

Instead, the governor’s communications director, Alex Lanfranconi, said in a statement: “The deportations will continue until morale improves.”

The question is where and when?