Suppose you’ve built a 5,000-bed immigration detention center in the middle of one of the most delicate ecosystems in the United States. Surrounded by alligators, it provides little in the way of food and water. Also, you have offered no protection from Florida’s swampy humidity and mosquitoes.
In that case, you cannot act surprised when a federal judge tells you to knock it off. And yet here we are.
That is, so far, that’s the story of Alligator Alcatraz, the Trump/DeSantis detention center for undocumented immigrants. Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams ruled that the “Alligator Alcatraz” facility in Florida’s Everglades must cease taking in new detainees and start shutting down operations within 60 days.
Federal Judge Orders Immediate Shutdown Of ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ Immigrant Detention Center
Her 82-page ruling states that the site was built without the required environmental review, violates the National Environmental Policy Act, and is trashing one of the country’s most fragile ecosystems. Judge Williams ordered the shutdown of power generators, sewage systems, and halted all new construction.
The Everglades has been the subject of a decades-long, multi-billion-dollar restoration effort by both Republican and Democratic leaders. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site—there usually aren’t prisons on those.
There’s no one doing a stint for racketeering at the Great Barrier Reef Penitentiary.
That didn’t stop Trump and his rizz-deficient Florida counterpart, Governor Ron DeSantis, from building a sprawling detention complex on an old airstrip in Big Cypress National Preserve.
Trump famously described the facility’s surrounding wildlife as a natural deterrent for escape attempts. Considering how willing the Trump administration is to ignore the rulings of federal judges, it wouldn’t be surprising if they ignored this one, too.
The center, opened in July, was intended to be the first of many state-run immigration detention facilities. Then came the lawsuits, the pressure from environmental groups, resistance from locals, and now a federal court order.
DeSantis called Judge Williams an “activist” (a slur Republicans hurl at any judge who does not rule in their favor) and claimed the ruling is politically motivated. He vowed to appeal. His administration has already filed the paperwork—and is rumored to be already working on a second detention center, this one at a former prison near Jacksonville.
Interestingly, some of the most significant resistance has come not just from groups representing the rights of the detainees, but from groups advocating for the land itself. Groups like Friends of the Everglades, which seek to protect wetlands, and the Miccosukee tribe of Florida, for whom the Everglades are ancestral lands, have, for now, halted operations on environmental grounds.
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