How did media outlets calculate the 800 missing detainees from Alligator Alcatraz, and what documents did they use?
Executive summary
News outlets derived the figure of roughly 800 “missing” detainees by cross‑checking two roster snapshots of men held at the Everglades site against ICE’s public detainee locator and internal ICE records: reporters matched names and identifiers from lists the Miami Herald obtained (July and August rosters) to entries in ICE’s databases and counted facility">about 800 people who no longer appeared or whose locations were listed only ambiguously, a calculation later summarized and vetted by outlets including Democracy Now!, Snopes and Project Censored [1] [2] [3]. The finding rests on public rosters, ICE locator queries and FOIA‑released internal data, but reporters and fact‑checkers warn the numbers are snapshots that can reflect transfers, delayed updates or deportations rather than definitive disappearances [3] [1].
1. How reporters built the core dataset: two detainee rosters obtained by the Miami Herald
The Miami Herald obtained two detainee lists — an initial roster in July and a follow‑up in August — that together named roughly 1,800 men who had been housed at the Everglades facility during July; those lists became the baseline list reporters used to trace individual trajectories [1] [4]. Journalists extracted names and identifying details from those rosters and treated them as discrete snapshots of who entered the facility at particular moments, which allowed side‑by‑side comparisons to ICE records and public locator results [1].
2. The comparison method: matching rosters to ICE databases and counting “no location” entries
Reporters took the roster names and queried ICE’s public detainee locator and internal ICE records released under FOIA, tallying which people appeared with a current facility, which were recorded as transferred, and which produced no definitive location — including hundreds flagged only with the vague note “Call ICE for details.” The Miami Herald reported that more than 450 entries returned no specific location and many others simply vanished from the online locator, producing the headline count that about two‑thirds of the rostered group could not be located by late August [1] [3].
3. The provenance of the “800” number and corroboration across outlets
Outlets that published the “about 800” figure relied on the Herald’s roster comparison and on additional FOIA data and reporting: Democracy Now! amplified the Herald’s finding, Project Censored summarized it as “around 800” who no longer appeared in ICE’s online database, and Snopes traced the claim back to the Herald’s two lists and cautioned about the snapshot nature of the data [2] [3]. NBC6’s analysis of newly released ICE data also showed facility averages and broader population flows, giving context that detainee lists and ICE updates move quickly and often reflect processing rather than permanent disappearance [5].
4. Limits, alternative explanations and institutional gaps reporters noted
Journalists and fact‑checkers emphasized several caveats: the rosters and ICE locator are point‑in‑time datasets that fluctuate as people are transferred, released or deported; some detainees were moved to other ICE facilities and thus left the Everglades roster but were still in custody elsewhere (Miami Herald, Snopes) [1] [3]. Amnesty International and The Guardian added a structural explanation: the Florida‑run site was operating outside standard federal tracking systems, which can produce gaps in public tracking and prolonged “incommunicado” detentions that make it harder to confirm whereabouts [6] [7]. The Department of Justice and AP also noted that the facility housed people at various stages of processing, including some who may never have been in formal removal proceedings, complicating any inference from absence in a particular database [8].
5. What the documents actually were — and what they do and do not prove
The key documents were the two Miami Herald rosters (July and August snapshots), ICE’s public detainee‑locator queries, and internal ICE data obtained or released via FOIA; reporters cross‑matched those sources to produce the ~800 estimate [1] [3] [2]. Those documents prove there were substantial discrepancies between who was listed as having been held at the Everglades site and who appeared in ICE’s standard public tracking systems at later dates, but they do not by themselves prove criminal wrongdoing or systemic concealment: the discrepancies can reflect transfers, deportations, delayed database updates or the facility’s atypical chain of custody — conclusions that outlets and fact‑checkers explicitly flagged [3] [5] [6].