Gov. Ron DeSantis has said the location in the rugged and remote Everglades was meant as a deterrent against escape, much like the island prison in California that Republicans named it after. The detention center has an estimated annual cost of $450 million, according to a public database.

The answer could play a key role in a legal battle over the facility’s fate. And it has bigger implications, too.

Records analyzed by the Times/Herald found that nearly two out of every five immigrants listed in early July as being detained at Alligator Alcatraz or headed there were still recorded as detainees at the site at the end of the month.

A federal judge tossed out part of a lawsuit brought by detainees at the "Alligator Alcatraz" detention center in the Florida Everglades, handing a partial victory to the Trump administration.

A federal judge handed down a split decision Aug. 18 in a lawsuit brought by detainees at Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz.”

Although a federal judge in Miami ordered their case be moved to another Florida district, the ACLU and other plaintiffs suing the controversial migrant detention facility over access to attorneys insist they'll win the litigation - and that they have already been handed "an important victory.