Analysis of ICE data reveals that fewer than one-third of the over 6,700 men housed at the Florida Soft-Sided Facility-South since July had final orders of deportation, contradicting Gov. Ron DeSantis's claim that all detainees had such orders. The majority of detainees had no criminal convictions or only minor offenses, and less than 7% had convictions for violent crimes, including murder or sexual assault. Additionally, the facility's operational costs and total taxpayer expenditure remain undisclosed.
Many of the secrets of a detention center dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” are no longer secrets. NBC6 Investigates has obtained thousands of records detailing the records of who’s been there, and what we found contradicts some of what state officials have been saying. Tony Pipitone reports.
A huge trove of data released last week by ICE and analyzed by NBC6 Investigates reveals for the first time details on the more than 6,700 men who have been housed in what ICE calls the Florida Soft-Sided Facility-South – dubbed by the state “Alligator Alcatraz.”
Among other revelations, it shows Gov. Ron DeSantis falsely stated on July 25 that everyone being housed there had a final order of deportation, as he cast doubt on the veracity of the families who insisted their loved ones held there did not have final orders.
Watch NBC6 free wherever you are
WATCH HERE
“Everybody here is already on a final removal order,” DeSantis stated. “So, in that situation, to have a family member say they have the proper credentials when they’ve already been ordered to be removed through the process shows you that that is not accurate.”
His director of emergency management, Kevin Guthrie, repeated the claim, saying, “Again, we reiterate: everybody at this facility is on a final removal order.”
In fact, only 31% of the more than 1,200 men held there on July 25 had a final order of removal, according to the ICE detentions database. Nearly 70% did not.
Most of the 1,239 still had no final order as of Oct. 15, the last day entered in the data ICE released last week to the University of California, Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project, which obtained them through a lawsuit brought against ICE.
The offices of the governor and his emergency management department have declined to answer why DeSantis and Guthrie made those apparently false statements in July.
Local
CULLING THE DATA
NBC6 Investigates separated “Alligator Alcatraz” details from more than 917,000 records in the ICE detentions table, which the project states logged every book-in and book-out from detention nationwide from Oct. 1, 2024, to Oct. 15, 2025. Those bookings involved more than 326,000 individuals, as many were transferred and booked into several facilities during their stays with ICE.
An analysis of the records for 6,725 men listed as being booked into the state’s immigration detention center expose some of what the state and ICE have kept secret about the facility and those who have passed through it.
Two days before it officially opened on July 3, President Donald Trump and federal officials were given a tour by DeSantis and state officials, with the president stating, “Very soon this facility will house some of the most menacing migrants, some of the most vicious people on the planet.”
But the newly released ICE data paints a much less menacing picture of the men held there.
About one-in-four of the more than 6,700 men had what ICE considers a criminal conviction, and the “most serious conviction” recorded by ICE for about 300 of the more than 1,700 with a “criminal conviction” were traffic offenses – not including driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol, hit-and-run or vehicular manslaughter.
When you exclude those non-DUI traffic offenses from the “convicted criminal” population, the data reveals about 22% of those who entered the facility since July have criminal convictions more serious than those traffic offenses.
Nearly a third have no criminal histories at all and the rest, 43 percent, had pending criminal charges, the types of which are not provided in the data.
Criminality | Number | % of All Who Entered Facility | | Convicted Criminal | 1769 | 26% | | Less-Non-DUI Traffic Offenses | -301 | 4% | | Convicted (excluding Non-DUI Traffic Offenses) | 1468 | 22% | | Pending Criminal Charges | 2876 | 43% | | Other Immigration Violator | 2080 | 31% | | Total Of Who Entered Facility Through Oct. 15 | 6725 |
In response to what it said were “activist judges and media hoaxes,” ICE issued a press release in September saying the Everglades facility was “housing some of the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens including murderers, pedophiles, weapon traffickers, and drug dealers.”
And, indeed, it has – to a degree.
Accompanying the release were photos of men ICE said had convictions for violent crimes including murder, attempted murder, sexual battery, child molestation, robbery and aggravated assault.
But the NBC6 analysis of the data shows they and men with similar convictions were by far the exception.
On the date the release was issued, Sept. 10, the data shows only 378 men were housed there, as operations had largely wound down in previous weeks after a judge issued an order that would have effectively shut down the facility by October. That order was stayed, though, and the population count was starting to ramp back up from a low of 98 on Sept. 4.
By Sept. 10, nearly 3,900 men had made their way into what ICE calls the Florida Soft-Sided Facility-South, according to the data, which also lists the most serious criminal conviction for each of them.
Fewer than 170 of them – about 4% of the total bookings since it opened in July until that point – had a most serious conviction among those crimes listed by ICE in its press release.
In all, including all violent crimes, about 7% of the more than 6,700 men booked there before Oct. 16 had their most serious conviction for a violent crime, according to the NBC6 analysis of the data.
STILL SECRET: THE COSTS
The detentions data and other databases analyzed by NBC6 Investigates reveal much about those arrested and held, but it does not reveal how much it costs taxpayers on average to house each prisoner per day.
The state awarded more than $200 million in no-bid contracts – the details of which were removed by the state from its “transparency” website – to build what ICE calls the Florida Soft-Sided Facility-South on a lightly-used airstrip in Collier County that the state seized from its owner, Miami-Dade County.
The federal government in October announced it has committed more than $600 million in grants to reimburse the state for its efforts in the Everglades and in Baker County, where another immigration facility opened in an unused portion of a state prison, home at last count in the data to nearly 650 people.
But the state has not disclosed how much of that money has been spent on capital or operating costs at each facility and the source of those funds, so it is not possible to estimate how much taxpayers have doled out each day on average to house the detainees. The facility in the Everglades has averaged 729 detainees per day since its official opening July 3; the one in Baker County has averaged 339 since its opening on Sept. 2, according to the data.
On the same day he stated all men there had final orders of deportation – when the data shows less than a third of them actually did – DeSantis went on to criticize “corporate media” who he said, “report as fact with no corroboration.” He criticized those who report assertions of “a criminal alien ordered to be deported, has committed criminal offenses in addition to immigrate … Somehow, with the criminal alien, you’ll just accept that. And why? Because it fits the desired narrative.”
When asked to comment on why the governor falsely stated everyone housed there had a final deportation order, his press office referred us to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which also provided no comment.
‘ALLIGATOR ALCATRAZ’ BY THE NUMBERS (all data ends on Oct. 15):
AVERAGE DAILY POPULATION: 729 DETAINEES
PEAK POPULATION: 1,468 ON JULY 29
LOWEST POPULATION: 98 ON SEPT. 3-4
MOST RECENT POPULATION: 894 DETAINEES
AVERAGE LENGTH OF COMPLETED STAY: 12 DAYS
LONGEST CURRENT STAY (AS OF OCT. 15): 31 DAYS (A 43-year-old Guatemalan man with no criminal convictions or pending criminal charge who has had a final order of removal since 2007.)
THE LONGEST COMPLETED STAY: 58 DAYS (A 21-year-old Honduran man convicted of fraud who voluntarily deported in October after three months in ICE custody – nearly two of them at the state facility in the Everglades.)
Most serious criminal convictions most-frequently listed for men who have been booked into the facility since it opened in July through Oct. 15:
