“We, the People, Shut it Down!” Alligator Alcatraz Permanently Closed
Kevin Guthrie, Florida's Emergency Management director, announced a “full demobilization” of Alligator Alcatraz on a conference call with all vendors whose companies had provided services to the brutal detention camp in the Everglades. Alligator Alcatraz will be permanently closed.
Noelle Damico, Director of Social Justice at the Workers Circle, responded:
“We, the people, shut it down!
This decisive victory in the battle against Alligator Alcatraz, the ‘jewel in the crown’ of the Trump detention regime, is the result of thousands of ordinary people gathering under the banner of Constitutional Rights and common human decency, through the Freedom Vigil at Alligator Alcatraz.”
The Workers Circle, a national Jewish social justice organization, initiated these weekly Freedom Vigils in August 2025, and for forty-seven weeks spearheaded a broad coalition of organizations — civic, faith, union, veterans, small business, students — and every day people of every political stripe from across Florida to denounce the abduction, detention, deportation, and disappearance of our neighbors, family members and friends and to permanently close Alligator Alcatraz.
“The Freedom Vigils are a winning human rights strategy that mobilized people to show up and speak out, at the vigils and beyond. People who were detained there risked it all to convey the harm happening to them, and the Workers Circle was there to gather testimony and share their accounts with press and lawmakers” added Damico.
The Workers Circle and families with loved ones detained, testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee and triggered an investigation into the use of torture at Alligator Alcatraz by Senators Durbin and Ossoff. People attended the vigils and went home to write opinion pieces and letters to the editor, to tell their neighbors and contact their lawmakers to insist Alligator Alcatraz be shut down.
The work continues to “shut it down” everywhere, but it continues with the knowledge that doing so is possible. It continues knowing that this blueprint for cruelty in the Everglades was ended by ordinary people who refused to stay silent, who took action together consistently, persistently, and defied every obstacle to speak the truth, to help their neighbors, to insist our nation live up to its creed. All across the nation Freedom Vigils are springing up, from Chantilly, VA to Leavenworth, KS, from Pompano Beach, FL to Battle Creek, MI, committed to taking the lessons learned to the front lines of this ongoing battle.
We will not rest until all those who sadistically designed such immense harm to people — the literal torture and abuse — as well as those who made obscene profits from this cruelty synonymous with Alligator Alcatraz, are held to account.
ABOUT THE WORKERS CIRCLE:
The Workers Circle is a national Jewish social justice organization founded by Eastern European immigrants who came to the United States fleeing autocracy and persecution and seeking democratic freedoms. That history drives the organization’s work today. Home to the grassroots power-building model of Democracy Circles, national freedom vigils, and the Talk to Your Sheriff program, the Workers Circle’s multigenerational activist community of 200,000+ people powers our strategic, non-partisan campaigns to empower voters, strengthen Constitutional rights, and demand the multiracial democracy we need.
