Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida vowed on Friday to defend an immigration detention center in the Everglades despite a federal judge’s order that it be shut down.
Mr. DeSantis did not address the judge’s findings that the construction of the detention center, known as Alligator Alcatraz, violated a federal law requiring a review of potential environmental harms before such projects are built.
“We had a judge try to upset the apple cart with respect to our deportation and detention processing center down in South Florida,” Mr. DeSantis said at an event in Panama City, Fla. He said the outcome was “preordained” by Judge Kathleen M. Williams of the Federal District Court in Miami, whom he called “an activist just that is trying to do policy from the bench.”
“This is not going to deter us,” he added. “We’re going to continue working on the deportations, advancing that mission.”
Judge Williams barred new detainees from being sent to the Everglades detention center, which opened in early July as the nation’s first state-run facility for federal immigration detainees. She ordered that current detainees be transferred and that much of the lighting, fencing and other materials at the site be removed within 60 days.
Lawyers for the DeSantis administration filed a notice to appeal immediately after the ruling. Judge Williams’s ruling is preliminary as the case continues to be litigated. The state will almost certainly ask the courts to keep the ruling from taking effect pending appeal.
Mr. DeSantis, a Republican, likes to be at the forefront of culture wars and other contentious debates and has frequently faced unfavorable rulings from federal district judges over his two terms. Judge Williams was appointed by former President Barack Obama. The DeSantis administration has repeatedly appealed contentious cases to the more conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta, which have been more favorable to some of Florida’s policies.
Lawyers for the environmental groups that sued to halt the construction at the Everglades detention center said on Friday that they, too, were ready for a long court fight.
“No one’s declaring victory,” said Paul J. Schwiep, who is leading a team representing Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity. But, he added, “We really believe we have the facts on our side.”
The judge found that in building the detention center in an old airfield in Big Cypress National Preserve, the state and federal governments had violated the National Environmental Policy Act. The law requires an extensive environmental review, including public comment, before the construction of major federal projects on sensitive lands.
Even if the detention center were temporarily shut down so that such a review could now be conducted, the process is likely to take a long time, said Curtis Osceola, a lawyer for the Miccosukee Tribe, whose members live in the Big Cypress area. Other similar studies there have taken one to two years, he said.
Mr. Schwiep said that any “rational” analysis of alternatives to the Everglades site, given the potential harms to wetlands, protected species and people in that area, “would conclude that it makes no sense to build a 5,000-person detention center in the heart of the Everglades.”
It is unclear how many detainees are currently at the detention center. State officials had said they intended to have capacity for 4,000 detainees by the end of August. A spokeswoman for the Florida Division of Emergency Management, which operates the facility, did not respond to an emailed question about the detainee population on Friday.
State Representative Anna V. Eskamani, an Orlando Democrat who testified for the environmentalists in court, describing what she had seen on a state-guided visit to the detention center, said that immigration lawyers and detainees’ families have reported the recent transfer of hundreds of detainees out of the facility.
“My assumption is that the State of Florida expected a loss” in the case, she said, so they were bringing down detainee numbers and preparing a second immigration detention center. Mr. DeSantis announced last week that the state soon plans to open that second facility at an unused state prison in Baker County, west of Jacksonville.
In his remarks on Friday, Mr. DeSantis made no reference to the Everglades’ environmental significance, despite his administration’s efforts — like those of earlier Republican and Democratic administrations — to restore Florida’s so-called river of grass.
Just last week, Mr. DeSantis held a news conference in Melbourne, Fla., in which he announced the completion of a canal restoration project and underscored how many state resources have been devoted to “a very ambitious project of environmental stewardship.”
“There’s a lot of problems in the state, starting with the Florida Everglades,” he said then of the environment. “We said, ‘we’re going to do something about it,’ so we put our money where our mouth is.”
Florida, he added, is “blessed with some really significant natural marvels.”
“That has created a culture in this state of people who, for instance, love to fish, love to boat, love to be out in nature,” he said, “and it’s something that we’ve worked really hard to preserve and improve in my tenure as governor.”
Patricia Mazzei is the lead reporter for The Times in Miami, covering Florida and Puerto Rico.
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