By MIKE SCHNEIDER and KATE PAYNE, Related Press
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — The immigration detention heart within the Florida Everglades dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” should maintain shifting towards shutting down operations by late October, a choose has dominated, even because the state and federal governments battle that call.
U.S. District Decide Kathleen Williams late Wednesday denied these requests to pause her order to wind down operations on the facility, which has been tormented by studies of unsanitary circumstances and detainees being reduce off from the authorized system.
The detention heart was shortly constructed two months in the past at a calmly used, single-runway coaching airport within the Everglades. State officers signed greater than $245 million in contracts for constructing and working the power, which formally opened July 1.
President Donald Trump toured the power final month and advised it might be a mannequin for future lockups nationwide as his administration races to develop the infrastructure wanted to extend deportations.
Attorneys for the U.S. Division of Homeland Safety mentioned of their request for a keep that Williams’ order final week, if carried out, would disrupt the federal authorities’s capacity to implement immigration legal guidelines.
However the choose in Wednesday evening’s order famous that the detainee inhabitants already was dwindling on the facility, and that the federal authorities’s “immigration enforcement goals will not be thwarted by a pause in operations.”
Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration is getting ready to open a second immigration detention facility dubbed “Deportation Depot” at a state jail in north Florida.
FILE – This picture from a video feed exhibits Gov. Ron DeSantis talking about deportation flights from the distant Everglades immigration lockup often called “Alligator Alcatraz″ on July 25, 2025 in Ochopee, Florida. (Workplace Of Florida Governor Ron Desantis through AP, file)
Williams mentioned in final week’s order that she anticipated the inhabitants of “Alligator Alcatraz” to say no inside 60 days by way of the transferring of the detainees to different services, and as soon as that occurred, fencing, lighting and turbines ought to be eliminated. She wrote the state and federal defendants can’t convey anybody aside from those that are already being detained on the facility onto the property.
Environmental teams and the Miccosukee Tribe had argued of their lawsuit that additional development and operations ought to be stopped till federal and state officers complied with federal environmental legal guidelines. Their lawsuit claimed the power threatened environmentally delicate wetlands which can be residence to protected vegetation and animals and would reverse billions of {dollars} spent over many years on environmental restoration.
A second lawsuit additionally was filed by civil rights teams final month towards the state and federal governments over practices on the Everglades facility, claiming detainees have been denied entry to the authorized system. One other federal choose in Miami final week dismissed elements of the lawsuit which had been filed in Florida’s southern district after which moved the remaining counts towards the state of Florida to the neighboring center district.
Civil rights teams final Friday filed a 3rd lawsuit over practices on the facility in federal court docket in Fort Myers, asking for a restraining order and a brief injunction that might bar Florida businesses and their contractors from holding detainees at “Alligator Alcatraz.” They described “severe problems” on the facility which have been “previously unheard-of in the immigration system.” Detainees have been being held for weeks with none prices, that they had disappeared from ICE’s on-line detainee locator and nobody on the facility was making preliminary custody or bond determinations, the civil rights teams mentioned.
Immigration is a federal concern, and Florida businesses and the personal contractors employed by the state haven’t any authority to function the power, the civil rights teams argued in asking that their lawsuit be licensed as a category motion.
Initially Printed: August 28, 2025 at 9:56 AM EDT
