Florida Gov. DeSantis caught in a massive lie, his “final orders” claim turned into pure fiction
Florida – Newly leaked federal detention data has shed light on what Florida officials have frequently called one of the safest and most dangerous immigration detention centers in the country. This is very different from what was said in the public earlier this year. The Florida Soft-Sided Facility-South, which state leaders call “Alligator Alcatraz,” has housed thousands of men since it opened in early July.
The Deportation Data Project at the University of California, Berkeley got this information through a lawsuit. It includes detailed records on more than 6,700 men who were booked into the Everglades-area detention center. NBC6 Investigates looked at the data, which show every ICE detention booking in the country from October 1, 2024, to October 15, 2025.
One of the most shocking things that came out was what Gov. Ron DeSantis and state disaster management officials said about the legal status of detainees. On July 25, DeSantis stated in public that everyone at the facility had already gotten a final order of removal. This was in response to families who said their relatives were still fighting their immigration cases.
“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.”
The numbers tell a different story. Only roughly 31% of the more than 1,200 men who were held at the location on July 25 had final deportation orders. Almost 70% did not. As of October 15, the last date in the dataset, records show that most of those guys still did not have final removal orders months later. The governor’s office and the state’s disaster management department have not said why those earlier assertions did not match up with federal records.
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The dataset is very large; it includes more than 917,000 detention records from across the country, including more than 326,000 people, many of whom were moved between different institutions. In that collection, 6,725 men were found to have gone through the Florida correctional center since it started.
At first, state and federal officials said the facility was a place to hold very dangerous people. Two days before its official opening on July 3, Gov. DeSantis hosted President Donald Trump and other federal officials for a tour. Trump called the future detainees “some of the most menacing migrants” and “some of the most violent people on Earth.”
But the ICE data gives a more detailed picture. ICE had a criminal record for around one out of every four people who were arrested. About 300 of those people had traffic violations as their most serious conviction, not including DUI cases, hit-and-run cases, or vehicular manslaughter. When those non-DUI traffic cases are excluded, about 22 percent of detainees had more serious criminal convictions.
Records show that almost one-third of the men imprisoned there had never been in trouble with the law before. Another 43 percent had criminal charges pending, although the report doesn’t say what those charges were.
ICE sent out a press release in September to fight back against what it called “misinformation” from critics and the media. The press release said that the Everglades facility was harboring “some of the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens.” The agency highlighted detainees convicted of violent crimes such as murder, sexual battery, and aggravated assault.
The data suggests that those cases did happen, although not as many as were thought. Since July, around 3,900 men had been booked into the institution by September 10. Fewer than 170 of them, or roughly 4%, had the most serious conviction that ICE said was a violent crime. In general, only around 7% of the men who were booked into the institution before mid-October had a violent offense as their most serious conviction.
As legal problems and court decisions continue to affect the future of the detention center, the new data gives us the clearest image yet of who has truly been confined within “Alligator Alcatraz.” This goes against what many people have been saying about the facility since it opened.
