MIAMI — A federal judge Thursday ruled construction must temporarily stop at “Alligator Alcatraz” as hearings challenging the Everglades-based detention center’s environmental impact continue.
District Judge Kathleen Williams ordered the state to, at the very least, stop installing additional lighting, infrastructure, pavement, filling or fencing and to halt excavation for 14 days. She called the request for the temporary restraining order from the plaintiffs, which represent environmental groups, “pretty reasonable” to prevent further interruption to the ecosystem. The judge, an Obama-era appointee, said the plaintiffs had introduced evidence of “ongoing environmental harms.”
“I think that evidence is sufficient to support the plaintiffs’ claims,” she said, pointing to how many elected officials, including presidents, had lauded the Everglades over the years and wanted it to remain “pristine.”
The decision came after Williams heard arguments from expert witnesses theorizing that newly created pavement in the area would have consequences on America’s largest wetlands. The airstrip housing the detention center is surrounded by the federally protected Big Cypress National Preserve, a fragile ecosystem home to endangered species like the Florida bonneted bat and the Florida panther.
Thursday marked the second day in a row that Williams heard arguments regarding environmental harms that might come from the detention center. Questioning is scheduled to continue Tuesday, and the defense hasn't yet brought up its witnesses.
The judge offered to continue the hearing into Thursday afternoon to avoid the temporary restraining order, but the defense team representing the state had already released its witnesses to return to Tallahassee.
During Wednesday’s hearing, each side had agreed to end Thursday’s proceedings by noon and meet again Tuesday, given conflicting schedules. The plaintiffs then raised the need for a temporary restraining order Thursday, and Williams reprimanded both sides for failing to predict that the hearing would need to take place over multiple days.
The state pushed back on the temporary restraining order, noting that a detention center requires a good amount of activity to care for detainees.
“Can I stand here and say not one feature of this site will change in any iota? How could I even say that?” asked Jesse Panuccio, the lawyer representing Florida Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie. The Emergency Management Division is leading the construction and management of the facility for the state.
Williams shot back that "construction" was the key word for the state to consider and said it was meant to apply to “erecting, building, amplifying the facility footprint.” She allowed the various sides to take a lunch break and make their arguments when they returned, issuing her decision within minutes after they finished.
The hearing involves just one of several lawsuits that have been filed against “Alligator Alcatraz.” Friends of the Everglades, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida argue that the state and federal government failed to follow federal environmental law when it quickly built a tented detention facility at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport.
They specifically allege that officials should have asked the public to weigh in, looked for alternative sites and sought ways to minimize effects to the wetlands. Paul Joseph Schwiep, who is representing the plaintiffs, described the law as a “look before you leap” requirement.
On Thursday morning, two experts testified using aerial photos and videos that the newly paved area would cause harm to the environment through runoff. They also said temporary silt fencing in the area wouldn’t help reduce stormwater runoff.
Christopher McVoy, a wetlands ecologist, testified that he received a tour of the area June 28 from the incident commander and said it was clear new pavement had been put down.
Because the wetlands are flat, he explained, runoff or other contamination from the pavement can easily travel like a sheet through other parts of the Everglades during rain or storms and disturb the sensitive ecosystem. The water can rise up to 2 feet, depending on the season, then drag debris from the road into the wetlands, he explained.
McVoy said he “definitely” would have expected the detention facility to have agencies study the area before adding the pavement, which he described as not being porous.
“It’s like pouring water on glass,” McVoy said of water landing on the new pavement. “It doesn't go in; it runs off. And wherever it runs into is potentially a concern. That’s why urban areas [near the Everglades] have strict requirements about how to have a plan to treat water.”
Geologist Dillon Reio testified that he estimated 20 or more acres of new pavement had been added to the site. He said pollution chemicals would form as a result, damaging aquatic and terrestrial life.
One of the defense's main arguments is that the environmental law in question, the National Environmental Policy Act, doesn’t apply given that the facility was “planned, executed, managed and funded” by the state and not the federal government, as Panuccio described it to the judge. Schwiep countered that all the plaintiffs had to show was that a “federal actor is involved,” and Williams concluded it was a “joint partnership.”
Panuccio had asked the judge to consider factoring in that illegal immigration posed a harm to society and noted that detention centers had been overcrowded, necessitating temporary detainment facilities.
Much of the state’s pushback additionally rests on an argument that the airstrip was being used more frequently than the plaintiffs realize before the detention center was built. They leaned into assertions that the plaintiffs failed to show any new significant impact to the environment from the way the airstrip operated previously.
They pointed to data showing an estimated 150 flights used the airstrip every day for flight training, as well as training for military aircraft, and argued through questioning that Reio’s testimony wasn’t specific enough because he used engineering drawings rather than accessing the site directly to study it. They also said he failed to use the initial flight data as a baseline for comparing the impact to the area and didn’t personally assess the drainage setup.
The state hasn’t specified what types of aircraft were using the airstrip before, but one aerial photo showed what appeared to be a large commercial-style plane. The state’s Emergency Management Division didn’t respond to questions about how many flights are coming in and out of the airstrip now and whether the area is still being used as a training facility.
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