by WorldTribune Staff / 247 Real News August 28, 2025

A Florida judge has denied the Trump Administration’s effort to keep “Alligator Alcatraz” open.

Miami U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams, an Obama appointee, denied the Department of Homeland Security’s request Wednesday for a stay of her order from last week barring the facility from admitting new illegal alien detainees and requiring parts of it to be dismantled in 60 days.

The facility in Florida’s Everglades — which holds up to 2,000 detainees and had been in the process of expanding to hold as many as 4,000 — is in the process of being cleared out, a DHS source told The Post.

A DHS official on Thursday said the agency was “complying” with the order and relocating detainees to other facilities, but blasted Williams as an “activist judge.”

Her order “is yet 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,” The Post cited the DHS official as saying.

Williams ruled the Trump Administration violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in bypassing the review process and ordered a halt to bringing in new detainees and the removal of fencing, lighting, gas hookups, generators, sewage and waste within 60 days.

She previously told the feds to stop construction that would have expanded the facility.

State officials said shutting down the facility for the time being would cost them $15 million to $20 million and that it would cost another $15 million to $20 million to reinstall structures if they ultimately are allowed to reopen the facility. They also said that the Florida Division of Emergency Management will lose most of the value of the $218 million it has invested in making the training airport suitable for a detention center.

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis ’ administration is preparing to open a second immigration detention facility dubbed “Deportation Depot” at a state prison in north Florida.

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