As Eve Samples steered her white Volvo west from Miami along Tamiami Trail, the city vanished behind her and the Everglades opened up on both sides of the two-lane highway in an endless expanse of sawgrass marsh. The sun blazed on the warm winter day, scattered clouds drifting slowly across the blue sky.

Samples, executive director of the nonprofit organization Friends of the Everglades, has taken this scenic route into Florida’s most famous subtropical wetland many times. The Everglades stretches roughly 2 million acres across much of the southern peninsula. Water flows slowly south from Lake Okeechobee to quench miles of the sawgrass, cypress swamps, and mangrove forests — home to wading birds, alligators, crocodiles, and the endangered Florida panther, among more than 2,000 species of native plants and animals.

But recently, her view on this familiar route changed.

Along with the “Welcome to Big Cypress National Preserve” signs, a new road sign had appeared on the side of the highway.

“Alligator Alcatraz,” it reads.

As of July 2026, the detention center has since closed and its detainees have been transferred, but the controversy surrounding its construction and existence in the Everglades has not ended. 

At a once-remote airstrip, two state troopers were stationed on either side of Jetport Road. Further down at a checkpoint, a National Guardsman with a long gun told her she couldn’t go any farther.

Across from the entrance, the grass was worn into a patch of dirt, flattened by months of protests. People had gathered there week after week, standing in the heat or the rain with protest signs, including an interfaith vigil every Sunday.

Above her, a roseate spoonbill flew overhead, its pink wings bright against the sky.

Big Cypress is “probably my favorite part of the Everglades,” Samples says. “To me, it’s an escape.”

The namesake cypress trees rise from shallow water, some hundreds of years old, their trunks weathered and gray. Dwarf cypress trees stand smaller in other areas, their growth constrained by the Everglades’ thin soil. 

An abundance of American alligators lie along the Tamiami canals, sunning their dark, scaly bodies. The prehistoric species never felt threatening to Samples. Where some see alligators as beasts, Samples sees them as beautiful and largely benign creatures.

“Alligator Alcatraz was built, purportedly, in the heart of the Everglades, because no human could ever escape an environment with alligators and snakes,” she said. “That’s how it was portrayed, right?”

To her, the Everglades is not something to fear. Not a place to imprison people. But a treasure to protect. In 1947, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, who went on to found Friends of the Everglades, wrote a book called “The Everglades: River of Grass” that helped people view the great marsh as more than scary swamp. To Samples, Alligator Alcatraz pulls the Everglades right back into those old tropes: a place defined by danger and fear rather than beauty and life.

Stepping Into The Legacy 

Six years earlier, before the lawsuits, legislative battles, and trips to the Capitol, and before she became one of the state’s most visible defenders of the Everglades, Samples was in Key West with her mother. It was early 2020, and her life was about to change.

When her cell phone rang with the official offer to lead Friends of the Everglades as its executive director, Samples didn’t have to think about accepting the position. She’d never been more sure of anything. 

After the phone call, she headed to Judy Blume’s bookstore Books & Books to pick up Douglas’ autobiography, “Voice of the River.” She knew Friends of the Everglades’ history and its legacy. But she wanted to understand the woman who had built it.

She sat down at the bar at Pepe’s Cafe and began to read, typing notes into her phone as she went.  

“I just devoured the book,” Samples said. “I still have those notes on my phone.”

She found herself enchanted with the founder of the organization she was about to lead, not just as an environmental activist, but as a writer and suffragist with a poet’s eye for the landscape of the Everglades. Douglas had also shown a deep respect for the Indigenous people who had long lived there, at a time when many others did not.

“She did things that other people weren’t doing, and was ahead of her time,” Samples said. “I’m very inspired by her and just her irreverence and ability to speak truth to power.”

Douglas founded Friends of the Everglades in 1969 to stop a massive jetport proposed for Big Cypress. The movement she helped catalyze was successful, and in 1974, Congress established Big Cypress National Preserve as the first national preserve in the country.

The jetport fight also helped define modern environmental protections including the National Environmental Policy Act and the environmental impact statements it required.

For years, Samples has kept a framed photograph of the aborted jetport runway in her office, a reminder of that earlier battle and what it had saved. She found it almost beyond belief that, more than a half century later, the State of Florida would build the immigration detention center known as Alligator Alcatraz on the same land where the jetport was proposed—or that she and her team would sue under the law that came out of that battle.

“I never thought that we would have to fight for this very place again,” she said.

Jack E. Davis, environmental historian and author of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas biography “An Everglades Providence,” sees clear parallels between Douglas’ fight to protect the Everglades and the work Samples is doing today.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that Eve would have fulfilled Marjory Stoneman Douglas’ expectations,” Davis said. “In fact, I think Douglas would have been quite impressed by how she’s not only restored the organization but made it as vibrant as it has ever been.”

Davis also drew another connection between the two women: Both began their careers as journalists. Douglas worked as a reporter for the Miami Herald, the newspaper founded by her father, before becoming one of the Everglades’ most influential advocates. She wrote about politics, race, and the environment at a time when women in the industry were expected to cover society pages and domestic affairs.

Samples worked at daily newspapers for 20 years, the last decade as a columnist and editor for USA TODAY, TC Palm, and Treasure Coast Newspapers writing opinion pieces on a myriad of environmental issues, including harmful algal blooms and water quality. It was through her work as a journalist that she developed a passion for advocacy, much like Douglas in the century before.

“When this position came open in early 2020, it really felt like a natural fit to move to the front lines,” she said. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my career. It felt like the place I was supposed to be.”

Instead of writing about environmental threats, she began fighting them directly. Looking back, she said it felt like everything had been leading her to where she is today. 

“For the first time in my life, [in] this specific work and this lawsuit, I’ve had the feeling that everything before meets this point.”

Her 20 years of journalism, which involved gathering information, explaining complex issues in simple and compelling terms, writing opinion pieces, and leading a movement in her newsroom against toxic algae, had prepared her for this fight. 

The Battle Over Alligator Alcatraz

That moment began to take shape on June 17, 2025, during a drive home from the Florida Keys.

Samples and Leah Voss, Friends of the Everglades’ multimedia producer, were returning home from Islamorada after interviewing locals about clean water. Samples was behind the wheel, heading north on the Overseas Highway out of the Keys, when Voss opened her Instagram. She saw a post about plans to build an immigration detention center in the Everglades.

The two laughed it off.

“At first, we almost didn’t even take it seriously,” Voss said. “The rest of the ride, we weren’t dissecting it or forming a game plan, because we didn’t even really take it seriously or imagine that something would happen so fast.”

Samples remembered feeling the same disbelief.

“We thought, surely, ‘this is a stunt’ and ‘that can’t be real,’” she said.

By the next day, they knew it was.

Friends of the Everglades filed a lawsuit just days later, hoping to stop the project before it opened. The response came together quickly, with attorneys, advocates, and staff working day and night to build a case.

“It was a surreal period,” Samples recalled. “It felt kind of like air traffic control.”

What had begun as an Instagram post quickly became real. Voss remembered how fast everything changed.

“Literally the very next day, all hands on deck,” Voss said. “It was probably just the most intense summer of my life, constantly informing the public of what’s going on. It all just happened so fast.”

At the time, the organization had just eight full-time employees. Still, she said, the team rose to the occasion, gathering information, and alerting the public.

Then, around June 2025, the state moved heavy machinery onto the property and began construction. The detention center opened just eight days later, replacing the quiet Everglades wild with fences, lights, and guards. High-intensity lights powered by diesel generators now cut through the black night in an area that had earned international recognition for its dark skies. Glaring lights seared in key habitat for the Florida panther, a nocturnal species that depends on darkness to survive.

​“I love Florida, but I also am very confounded by Florida and the challenging political dynamics. The Everglades and what remains of it represent our future in the state.”

Marjory Stoneman Douglas

President Donald Trump visited the site July 1 alongside Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

“It’s known as Alligator Alcatraz, which is very appropriate, because I looked outside and that’s not a place I want to go hiking any time soon,” Trump said in a roundtable discussion.

In August, Friends of the Everglades won a preliminary injunction that temporarily halted activity at the site. Samples vividly remembers sitting at her desk in her home office around 9:30 p.m., reading the order and realizing what the team’s hard work had achieved.

“That was a huge motivator, seeing the impact we had,” Samples said. “I’m also incredibly motivated by literally thousands of people from across the country who have contacted us to say how grateful they are for our work.”

But the injunction was short-lived. Two weeks later, an appeals court paused it, allowing activity to resume.

“That was a real wind-out-of-our-sails moment,” Samples said.

Other hard moments were not as dramatic. Sometimes she just “ran out of gas.” Samples learned to pause when she could and carve out time for herself and her family; to connect with her husband and 17-year-old son. To return to nature, too.

Getting out on the water restores her the most. Samples and her husband often take a small motorboat out on the Indian River Lagoon and the St. Lucie River near their home in Stuart. Sometimes their son joins them. Other times, she reconnects with the Everglades more officially, like a recent morning kayaking with her team in the Loxahatchee Slough in western Palm Beach County.

​​“There’s just been some moments where I think I needed to deflate a little bit before pumping myself back up for the fight,” she said.

Voss had seen that persistence long before the lawsuit.

The two met more than a decade earlier while working at Treasure Coast News in Stuart. They traveled the state together, interviewing voters ahead of the 2018 gubernatorial election. 

After years of working beside Samples in the newsroom, Voss came to trust her sharp instincts, steady temperament, and calm leadership so deeply that when Samples left journalism, Voss trusted her enough to follow.

“I tell people that I believed in her so much I was willing to make a career change,” Voss said. “I knew that I would be in good hands working alongside her.”

She said Samples brought a steadiness that others relied on, especially when it came time to jump into the battle against Alligator Alcatraz.

“She doesn’t overreact, she doesn’t explode emotionally, she’s very level-headed and very diplomatic,” Voss said. “She’s somebody that you’re not scared of.”

Environmental leaders across Florida have also appreciated Samples taking a stand at a critical moment. Lauren Jonaitis is executive director of the Tropical Audubon Society, one of the state’s oldest conservation groups, which has filed amicus briefs in the legal case surrounding Alligator Alcatraz. She describes Samples’ leadership as embodying “both heart and grit, leading not from the sidelines but from the front lines and blending passion, clarity, and strategic resolve.” 

“She pushes for accountability, demands better policy outcomes, and reminds us that protecting the Everglades requires courage as much as conviction,” Jonaitis said.

Tropical Audubon has raised special concerns about the detention center’s artificial lighting, which can disrupt nocturnal wildlife, migratory birds, and the natural dark skies critical to endangered species.

Jonaitis recalled watching Samples speak on CNN last fall. As she described the detention center’s threats to the surrounding Everglades, her voice was incredibly inspiring, Jonaitis said.

“She brought a calm, science-based voice to a highly visible issue, making sure the conversation stayed grounded in the real impacts to wildlife, water, and the Everglades ecosystem,” Jonaitis said. “Her leadership strengthens all of us who work for these waters and wild places.”

Leading the Fight Forward

The Friends of the Everglades headquarters is nestled in a Sewall’s Point office complex near the St. Lucie River, just 2.5 miles from Samples’ home. But protecting the Everglades requires Samples to be everywhere from the Keys to Washington, D.C., to the state capitol in Tallahassee.

Earlier this year, she sat on a loud bus rolling out of Tallahassee after a long day at the Florida Capitol. Her phone buzzed in her hand as Everglades advocates talked across the aisle, their voices blending with the rumble of I-10.

Just hours earlier, she had walked the marble halls of the Capitol in a black pantsuit, meeting with lawmakers and urging them to safeguard the Everglades. She had attended a House committee meeting as legislators debated a proposal known as the “Blue Ribbon Projects” bill, which would have allowed developments of more than 10,000 acres to move forward without approval from local elected officials.

“That really cuts the public out of the process,” Samples said. “If you’re living in these areas, you can’t call your county commissioner and express your concerns.”

The bill died in the final days of the session. 

The trip was one of a few that Samples makes to Tallahassee each legislative session to track environmental bills and advocate for Everglades protections. Because of the threat of Alligator Alcatraz, this year’s session was more intense, Samples said.

“The load has definitely gotten heavier,” she said. “As we were tracking those bills playing defense, we all have this added responsibility to keep up with what’s happening in court.”

Friends of the Everglades staffers worked with their legal team to go through thousands of pages of documents tied to Alligator Alcatraz. The documents came after the organization sued the Florida Division of Emergency Management last fall under the state’s public records law, arguing the agency had not complied with requests filed months earlier.

A judge ordered the agency to release the records.

When they finally arrived, the documents included communications between the Division of Emergency Management and federal officials about applying for Federal Emergency Management Agency funding, along with an environmental assessment of the detention center site.

“We have a lot of concerns about the validity of [the environmental assessment],” Samples said.

Among the revelations: The state had been planning for the project for more than two years and anticipated spending more than $1 billion on the facility.

The appeals court heard arguments in early April over whether to keep in place the preliminary injunction environmental groups won last August. It happened to be Marjory Stoneman Douglas’ birthday.

On April 21, the federal appeals court ruled that Alligator Alcatraz could remain open, overturning the injunction. The ruling found that the detention center is run by the state, not federally controlled, and does not require federal environmental review.

Still, Samples remained resolute, like sawgrass bending in the wind but never breaking.

Then, in late June, the story shifted again. DeSantis announced that Alligator Alcatraz had closed and that all detainees had already been transferred. By July, much of the detention center had been completely dismantled, leaving behind an expanse of empty tarmac and the future of the property, and the consequences of its construction, unresolved.

Now, Friends of the Everglades is fighting to determine what comes next for the site. On July 2, Friends of the Everglades sent Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava a five-point plan calling for remediation, restoration and protection of the site, along with transparency and public input about its future.

To Samples, the closure marked a significant win, but it did not fully erase what had happened there. 

“It will be remembered as a dark chapter in Everglades history,” she said.

Samples acknowledged that such work to protect the Everglades takes years. Douglas founded Friends of the Everglades at age 79. She worked on behalf of the organization until she died at age 108.

To her, the Everglades was not separate from everyday life. It was intertwined with it, stretching far beyond park boundaries into the places people live, work, and grow up in South Florida.

​“I love Florida, but I also am very confounded by Florida and the challenging political dynamics,” Douglas said. “The Everglades and what remains of it represent our future in the state.”

When you see a wading bird in a strip mall parking lot, Samples told me, you are standing in the footprint of the Everglades and the remnants of its ecosystem, still there and still enduring—just like Samples and the generations of people who have fought for it.  

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Cover credit: ImagePerson, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons