The immigrant detention facility often known as “Alligator Alcatraz” is proven on July 4, 2025, as building was ending on the Dade-Collier Coaching and Transition airport within the Florida Everglades. A lawsuit, introduced by environmental teams and the Miccosukee tribe, has challenged the enlargement and operations of the ability.
Rebecca Blackwell/AP
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Rebecca Blackwell/AP
MIAMI — A lawsuit introduced by environmental teams and the Miccosukee tribe difficult building and operations of an immigration detention heart within the Florida Everglades wrapped up Wednesday with a number of key questions unanswered.
On the prime of the checklist is one U.S. District Choose Kathleen Williams requested a number of instances through the four-day listening to, “Who’s working the present?” on the so-called “Alligator Alcatraz.”
Through the listening to, legal professionals for 2 environmental teams cited feedback made by Trump administration officers in interviews and social media posts that it is an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility. In courtroom, legal professionals for Florida maintained it is a state detention heart working beneath ICE authority however could not inform the decide who truly is in cost on the web site.
Whereas immigration detentions and different operations on the facility will proceed because the authorized course of strikes forward, the query of who’s in cost on the heart is vital.
The environmental teams, Associates of the Everglades and the Middle for Organic Range, filed the lawsuit and have been joined by the Miccosukee tribe, which has conventional use and entry to the world. The three plaintiffs say the rushed building with out public enter or an environmental affect evaluation violate federal legislation they usually’re asking the decide to close it down.
At problem is NEPA — the Nationwide Environmental Coverage Act — which requires federal businesses to think about options, interact the general public and assess the environmental affect earlier than continuing with a mission. Attorneys for Florida and the Trump administration informed the courtroom that federal legislation does not apply as a result of the ability was constructed and is operated by the state.
Protesters collect to demand the closure of the immigrant detention heart often known as “Alligator Alcatraz” on the Dade-Collier Coaching and Transition Airport in Ochopee, Fla., on July 22, 2025.
Chandan Khanna/AFP through Getty Photos
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Chandan Khanna/AFP through Getty Photos
“This case boils down to regulate,” Justice Division lawyer Adam Gustafson stated. And on the web site, he stated, “The federal authorities has no motion or energy to regulate the exercise.”
Paul Schweip, an lawyer with Associates of the Everglades, stated Florida and the Trump administration have been intentionally preserving the query of who managed the location obscure. The detention heart he stated, “serves one single operate and that is immigration detention which as a matter of legislation is a federal authority.”
The power, which has tents and caged cells for as much as 5,000 immigration detainees, is housed at a not often used and principally deserted airfield positioned throughout the wetlands of the Massive Cypress Nationwide Protect.
Through the listening to, legal professionals for the environmental teams offered testimony detailing the affect the elevated exercise and inhabitants on the web site is having on protected species and the world’s water high quality.
Randy Kautz, a wildlife ecologist who helped write the state’s Panther Restoration plan, stated due to the intense lights, elevated site visitors and human presence on the web site, Florida panthers could be pushed out of no less than 2,000 acres of their habitat. There are solely an estimated 120 to 230 endangered panthers remaining in Florida.
Wetlands ecologist Christopher McVoy, who helped write the plan to revive the Everglades, raised issues with the courtroom about 20 acres of recent asphalt paving on the location and the affect it should have on water high quality within the fragile ecosystem. The Everglades ecosystem has a really low degree of nitrates and phosphates, vitamins that promote plant progress, stated McVoy. Runoff containing vitamins and pollution, he stated, would have a “drastic affect” on native vegetation and close by wetlands.
Staff of the Miccosukee tribe testified on the affect the elevated exercise on the web site is having on individuals who stay in tribal villages, a number of of that are positioned inside just a few miles of the ability. They stated runoff from the location sometimes travels south towards the villages and is more likely to comprise contaminants which will hurt the surroundings and human well being. And so they raised issues concerning the affect vivid lights on the facility are having on one other endangered species, the bonneted bat.
The teams and the tribe are asking Choose Williams to problem a preliminary injunction that might require the state and federal authorities to take away lighting, fencing and waste from the location, restore entry for members of the Miccosukee and to wind down operations there inside 14 days.
The decide issued a two-week non permanent restraining order Aug. 7 on new building on the facility. She stated she would rule on the request for a preliminary injunction earlier than that order expires.
