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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis held a press conference Friday morning at the facility dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” announcing that hundreds of illegal aliens have already been processed and deported from the site.
DeSantis revealed that deportation flights have begun using the facility’s on-site runway and are expected to ramp up.
We stood up Alligator Alcatraz in just eight days as a centralized facility for deportation staging. The facility has a two-mile runway that allows federal military aircraft to transport illegal aliens out of the country, right on site. These deportation flights operated by DHS… pic.twitter.com/o6xpaEJ753
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) July 25, 2025
“You’re going to see the numbers go up dramatically,” he added.
The flights, operated by the Department of Homeland Security, have already begun. While DeSantis confirmed that two or three flights have taken off, he did not specify the destinations of the deported migrants.
Governor DeSantis Speaks from Alligator Alcatraz https://t.co/AJeIVThH7O
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) July 25, 2025
“This was never intended to be something where people are just held and we just kind of twiddle our thumbs,” DeSantis said. “The whole purpose is to make this be a place that can facilitate increased frequency and numbers of deportations of illegal aliens.”
He continued, “That is the goal and one of the reasons why this was a sensible spot is that you have a runway that is right here, you don’t have to drive them to an airport, you go a couple of thousand feet and they can be on a plane.”
DeSantis noted that the facility, built in just days, is currently holding around 2,000 individuals and has the capacity to hold up to 4,000.
“We were able to, under Kevin Guthrie’s leadership, within record time, create a facility that could support intake, processing and eventually deporting these illegal aliens. And that’s important to deport from Florida and obviously from the United States as well,” DeSantis said.
According to the Associated Press, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement typically runs deportation flights from a few major hubs such as Harlingen, Texas; Alexandria, Louisiana; and Mesa, Arizona, with others scattered nationwide. In June, more than 200 deportation flights were logged, marking the highest monthly total since January 2020, per flight data tracked by Witness at the Border.
