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In September 2025, rumors swirled online that two-thirds of the detainees were missing from “Alligator Alcatraz” — the Florida migrant detention center assembled in eight days and opened in July 2025.
These rumors spread across multiple platforms, including Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), TikTok (archived) and X, where one post (archived) by news outlet Democracy Now! received more than 2.5 million views, as of this writing:
Some users in the comments asked Grok — X’s AI assistant — to verify the claim. Dozens of Snopes readers also searched for answers on the site. We looked into the rumor, and found that it stemmed from investigations published by the Miami Herald that claimed the whereabouts of two-thirds of more than 1,800 men detained at “Alligator Alcatraz” during the month of July — as of the end of August — were unknown.
The Herald did not claim to independently verify whether family members could not locate the 1,200 detainees, as the post above claimed, but rather used two detainee rosters the outlet obtained to inform its reporting.
On July 14, the Herald first published the names of more than 700 detainees housed at “Alligator Alcatraz.” The story noted:
The list — made public for the first time here — was shared with the Department of Homeland Security and the Florida Division of Emergency Management, which oversees the site. Neither disputed its accuracy.
On Aug. 19, the Herald published another story based on a second list the outlet obtained of 1,400 detainees’ names. The reporters did not list each name on the roster as they did with the July 14 story. In the second story, reporters compared the two datasets and searched names on the detainee locator system for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and found that two out of five immigrants on the list of detainees from the outlet’s July 14 story were moved elsewhere. The Aug. 19 story read:
More than 40% of the 750 detainees in the initial list were sent not out of the country but to other ICE facilities, the Herald found. Another 40% were still at the detention center.
Alligator Alcatraz detainees often did not appear in ICE’s locator system, the Herald found, and the fate of the rest — around 150 detainees — is unclear. Some of them were likely still at Alligator Alcatraz but others may have been deported.
The numbers in both data sets are snapshots in time, and fluctuate as detainees enter and leave the facility.
By Sept. 16, reporters Ben Wieder and Shirsho Dasgupta used the two detainee lists the Herald obtained in July and August to determine that, “As of the end of August, the whereabouts of two-thirds of more than 1,800 men detained at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ during the month of July could not be determined by the Miami Herald.”
They then broke the numbers down. According to their findings, 800 detainees showed no record in the online database for ICE, while more than 450 listed no location and only instructed the user to “Call ICE for details.”
We wrote to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security — which oversees ICE — as well as the Florida Division of Emergency Management — which oversees operations at “Alligator Alcatraz” — seeking information on detainees reportedly not accounted for. DHS responded: “FALSE. No one is unaccounted — including at Alligator Alcatraz — in ICE’s online detention locator system. This is yet another hoax about the facility.”
While the Herald did not reveal where it had obtained the two lists of detainees, the news site did use public records to reportedly verify the accuracy of the lists. In an email to Snopes, Wieder wrote:
To inform our reporting in this story and our prior stories, we compared information on the lists we’ve obtained with information from ICE’s online detaine locator system.
We’ve also verified information from the lists with the EOIR immigration courts database and with other public records.
Our comparison of the data we’ve obtained with these other external records and numerous interviews has confirmed the accuracy of the data.
Broadly speaking, the detention center — which is technically run by the state of Florida — has reportedly made it difficult for attorneys to reach their detained clients, therefore allegedly violating detainees’ First and Fifth amendment rights, according to a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union.
The Sept. 16 story, while dependent on these two detainee rosters for evidence, also presented testimony from family members of two detainees who had reportedly gone missing.
One man, a 53-year-old Guatemalan detained at “Alligator Alcatraz” whose family asked that his name not be included for fear of retribution, didn’t show up for a hearing, according to his attorney. A government attorney told the man’s attorney that he’d accidentally been sent to Guatemala instead of being transferred to a different detention center ahead of the hearing, as planned.
Communication from another man, Cuban national Michael Borrego Fernandez, went silent after ICE transferred him to another facility in California. His family described the situation as “psychological torture,” as they were worried about his health, given a recent surgery. They then found him in Mexico, where ICE had deported him without notice.
In sum, while Snopes had not independently verified that each name on the purported lists the Miami Herald used to determine that two-thirds of the detainees at “Alligator Alcatraz” during the month of July were missing from ICE’s locator system as of late August, evidence exists from real cases that detainees apparently have gone missing for stretches of time, or are not where ICE said they were. Therefore, the possibility exists that other detainees reportedly missing from the ICE system were also deported or sent to other unknown facilities without their family’s or attorney’s knowledge.
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Taija PerryCook
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