Immigration detention center known as 'Alligator Alcatraz' may soon close

WUSF | By Meghan Bowman

Published May 27, 2026 at 4:16 PM EDT

A detention center in the Florida Everglades dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz" has become too expensive to maintain and may soon close.

Related Content

An art museum in Maine tries to balance protecting art and saving energy

Molly Enking

Keeping a museum's temperature and humidity constant -- rain or shine, all year long -- takes a massive amount of energy, and it's expensive. But some museums have a solution.
A National Spelling Bee champion shares what it takes to win

Hosts, Gabriel J. Sánchez, Tinbete Ermyas

The 2025 Scripps National Spelling Bee champ shares what it takes to spell it right in 2026.
Visual impairments don't keep these birders out of the hobby

Nancy Eve Cohen

The phrase "bird watching" does not take in the full range of people who love searching for wild birds. We meet a few of the many visually impaired birders who use their ears.
A wildfire off the California coast threatened one of the world's rarest pines

Scott Detrow, Gurjit Kaur, Christopher Intagliata

NPR's Scott Detrow talks with Heather Schneider of the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden about the garden's efforts to conserve seeds of rare plants from Santa Rosa Island, where a wildfire just burned.
In a village in rural Alaska, these kids' school bus is an airplane

Rachel Cassandra

In most school districts, kids take a bus to school. But in the rural Alaska village of South Naknek -- pilot Jon King has been flying kids to school almost every school day for the last four decades.

You make NHPR possible.

NHPR is nonprofit and independent. We rely on readers like you to support the local, national, and international coverage on this website. Your support makes this news available to everyone.

Give today. A monthly donation of $5 makes a real difference.