The state of Florida has appealed against a federal judge’s order that the harsh immigration jail in the Florida Everglades known as “Alligator Alcatraz” must close within the next two months, a ruling that pumps the brakes on Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation agenda.
The Miami district court judge Kathleen Williams said state and federal authorities broke numerous environmental laws as they raced to build the tented facility at a disused airstrip in the fragile wetlands.
Since it opened in early July, touted by Trump as a base for the “the most vicious people on the planet” awaiting deportation, “Alligator Alcatraz” has built a reputation for brutality. Detainees have reported “inhumane” conditions including extreme heat, insects, and a lack of food and functioning toilet facilities.
The state filed a notice of appeal to the 11th US circuit court in Atlanta on Thursday night, within an hour of Williams’s preliminary injunction halting the intake of new detainees at the facility and setting a 60-day deadline for its dismantling.
Related: ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ showcases Trump’s surreal brand of stylized cruelty | Moira Donegan
Immigration advocates said on Friday that they believed only about 340 detainees were left at the camp after a concerted effort by officials to depopulate the facility in anticipation of the ruling. Authorities in Florida have previously said its capacity would be up to 3,000.
Attorneys for the defendants, which include the Florida emergency management department and federal Department of Homeland Security, will ask the panel to stay the order as legal arguments continue in the case.
They are expected to continue to assert that federal laws, including the requirement for an environmental impact study, do not apply because the jail was set up, managed and operated by the state of Florida using taxpayers’ money, independently of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (Ice).
Williams, however, dispelled that argument in her comprehensive 82-page ruling that made a distinct connection with the Trump administration.
“The project was requested by the federal government; built with a promise of full federal funding; constructed in compliance with Ice standards; staffed by deputized Ice task force officers acting under color of federal authority and at the direction and supervision of Ice officials,” she wrote.
“[It] exists for the sole purpose of detaining and deporting those subject to federal immigration enforcement. Detainees are brought onto the site by federal agents and deported from the site by federal agents on federally owned aircraft. The court will adhere to the time-tested adage: ‘if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck, then it’s a duck’.”
At a press conference on Friday, an alliance of environmental groups that filed the lawsuit said it was “cautiously optimistic” that the appeals court would uphold Williams’s order of closure. But it warned that the legal fight was still in its early stages. The case could eventually end up before the US supreme court, which has returned a number of favorable rulings to the Trump government in recent months.
“We’re prepared to meet that motion to stay with the same energy, vigor, with the law and the facts, that we brought to seeking the injunction in the first place,” said Paul Schwiep, an attorney representing the groups including Friends of the Everglades, the Center for Biological Diversity, Earthjustice and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida.
Curtis Osceola, senior policy adviser to the Miccosukee Tribe, welcomed Williams’s questioning of the location of the camp, built in a remote part of the Everglades surrounded by a national preserve and the tribe’s ancestral homelands.
“The judge kept asking, ‘why in the Everglades, can anyone tell me why?’, and no one could answer that clearly from the government,” he said.
“It was obvious there was no explanation, other than this was a publicity stunt.”
Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, who advocated vociferously for the jail and toured it with Trump when it opened last month, did not immediately comment on the ruling. His communications director, Alex Lanfranconi, posted a pithy reaction to X on Thursday that said: “The deportations will continue until morale improves.”
Neither the White House nor homeland security department has yet offered comment.
Democratic politicians in Florida, however, have welcomed the jail’s ordered closure.
“It’s about damn time,” Congresswoman Frederica Wilson said in a statement. “After so much pressure from me and my colleagues, finally Alligator Alcatraz is closing down.
“It was cruel, careless, and destructive from the start and should have never been built.”
Maxwell Frost, a congressman who visited the camp on Tuesday, hailed the ruling as “a major victory for justice, civil rights, and our environment”.
He said: “The Everglades Immigrant Detention Center is nothing more than a state-sponsored, government-funded internment camp designed to keep Black and Brown immigrants in hellish conditions while Donald Trump pretends it makes our country safer.
“But our fight doesn’t end here. I remain committed to holding this administration accountable, and I will continue to show up unannounced to this and any other facility like it in Florida and across the country to protect innocent immigrants who are being racially targeted.”
DeSantis announced earlier this month that the state would soon open a second immigration jail at a disused prison near Gainesville, in northern Florida, to increase capacity.
Comments