Dhs pilot of migrants from “ Alligator Alcatraz ” from Florida, reveals Desantis

Florida governor Ron Desantis announced that internal security has started to pilot migrants out of detention “Alligator Alcatraz”.

“I am happy to announce that these flights out of the Alligator Alcatraz by DHS have started. The rate is increasing. We have already had a number of flights in recent days, we have had hundreds of illegals (which) have been deleted by,” said Desantis on Friday while he was speaking in southern Florida.

When asked for the exact number of deportations and where the planes were heading to the assistant interior security secretary, Tricia McLaughlin published an online statement to Fox News Digital.

“Launch the expulsion planes,” she said.

Inside “Alligator Alcatraz”: the new migrant detention center erected at an abandoned Everglades airport

President Donald Trump, Florida Governor, Ron Desantis, and the interior security secretary, Kristi Noem, turn a migrant detention center, nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz”, located on the Dade-Collier training and transition airport site in Ochopee, Florida, July 1, 2025. (Getty)

DESANTIS authorized the construction of the detention center for illegal immigrants on a property of 30 square miles in the swamps of the county of Miami – Dadade as part of an emergency order. The property in Ochopee is an old airport which has been equipped with robust tent structures.

The Florida emergency management division said that the site had the capacity of 2,000 detainees, but may hold 4,000.

Trump says the only way to get out of “the Alligator Alcatraz” is expulsion

Desantis and Trump Tour “Alligator Alcatraz” in Ochopee, Florida, July 1, 2025. (Andrew Caballero-Reynoldsafp via Getty Images)

DESANTIS said on Friday that “the whole goal is to make this place which can facilitate an increased frequency and a number of deportations of illegal foreigners, and that is the objective”.

“And one of the reasons why it was a reasonable place, it is because you have this track which is here. You do not have to drive them for an hour to an airport. You go a few thousand feet and they can be on an airplane and out of it,” added the governor.

An aerial view of an migrant detention center, nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz”, is seen on the site of the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport in Ochopee, Florida, July 7, 2025. (Chandan Khanna / AFP via Getty Images)

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“This airport is able to accept commercial size aircraft and carry out day and night operations,” said Desantis.

Danamarie McNicholl, Emma Colton and Mara Robles of Fox News contributed to this report.