Alligator Alcatraz remains open, Florida’s emergency director says
Florida’s top emergency management official, whose job is to ensure Floridians are prepared for hurricanes, said Thursday that he did not know why federal immigration authorities said this week that immigrants at Alligator Alcatraz were being relocated due to hurricane season. He said the detention center was still open.
Kevin Guthrie, the executive director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, which oversees operations at Alligator Alcatraz, said he did not see the statement issued by Immigration and Customs Enforcement before its release. He said he learned about it only through the media and has not been instructed by the federal government to pause operations at the Everglades detention center.
“So, why was the hurricane issue listed? I can’t answer that question for you,” he told a Miami Herald reporter at a roundtable event at Florida International University’s Biscayne Bay campus highlighting hurricane preparedness.
“I’ll have to kick back to ICE as to why they utilized that as their statement,” he said.
Guthrie’s comments highlight, yet again, the divergent messages and disorganized policies of the state and federal governments regarding Alligator Alcatraz. Since the site opened last summer, state and federal officials have kicked questions about the site’s operations back and forth — the state saying federal immigration officials control the site, and federal officials pointing back at the state.
ICE’s statement this week that it was moving detainees out of the facility because of “safety” due to “hurricane season” had come as a happy surprise to advocates — even as they pointed out that the state said it was well-prepped to deal with any storms at the site when the detention center was erected last summer in the middle of hurricane season.
Guthrie on Thursday maintained that the detention center’s “soft-sided structure can withstand up to 74 miles-per-hour winds, which is a tropical storm or Category One hurricane.” He said the detention center has always had an evacuation plan and that there was never “an intent to leave individuals at that facility, even in a tropical storm.”
Guthrie also told reporters that federal immigration officials have “drawn down the individuals that are there,” but the state had not received any instructions to stop operations.
“At this point in time, we have not been told to stand down, so we are still in a posture to receive detainees,” he said.
It is unclear from what state and federal officials are saying whether the detention center is empty. Over the past weeks, family members and advocates have said that immigrants being held there had been moved to other Florida immigration facilities, such as Krome North Processing Center and Miami FDC, or transferred out of state.
Gov. Ron DeSantis, in a press conference on Tuesday, said he would be surprised if everyone in the detention center had been moved. He told reporters that when he was briefed on Monday, there were still immigrants being held there.
As to what happens to the seized Miami-Dade County airstrip where the state erected Alligator Alcatraz once all the immigrants being held there are moved out, Guthrie said it depends on what the Department of Homeland Security wants to do with the facility.
“We stand by and await further instructions on what to do with that facility,” he said.
This story was originally published June 18, 2026 at 1:37 PM with the headline "Alligator Alcatraz remains open, Florida’s emergency director says."