ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — The immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades dubbed must keep moving toward shutting down operations by late October, a judge has ruled, even as the state and federal governments fight that decision.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams late Wednesday denied those requests to pause to wind down operations at the facility, which has been plagued by reports of and detainees being cut off from the legal system.
The facility was already being emptied of detainees, shared with The Associated Press on Wednesday. In a message sent to South Florida Rabbi Mario Rojzman on Aug. 22 related to providing chaplaincy services at the facility, Florida Division of Emergency Management Executive Director said “we are probably going to be down to 0 individuals within a few days,” implying there would soon be no need for the services.
The detention center was quickly built two months ago at a lightly used, single-runway training airport in the Everglades. State officials signed more than in contracts for building and operating the facility, which officially opened July 1.
President toured the facility last month and suggested it could be a model for future lockups nationwide as his administration races to needed to increase deportations.
Attorneys for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in their request for a stay that Williams’ order last week, if carried out, would disrupt the federal government’s ability to enforce immigration laws.
But the judge in Wednesday night’s order noted that the detainee population already was dwindling at the facility, and that the federal government’s “immigration enforcement goals will not be thwarted by a pause in operations.”
Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration is preparing to open a second immigration detention facility dubbed “Deportation Depot” at a state prison in north Florida.
Williams said in last week’s order that she expected the population of “Alligator Alcatraz” to decline within 60 days through the transferring of the detainees to other facilities, and once that happened, fencing, lighting and generators should be removed. She wrote the state and federal defendants can’t bring anyone other than those who are already being detained at the facility onto the property.
Environmental groups and the Miccosukee Tribe had argued in their lawsuit that further construction and operations should be stopped until federal and state officials complied with federal environmental laws. Their lawsuit claimed the facility threatened environmentally sensitive wetlands that are home to protected plants and animals and would reverse billions of dollars spent over decades on environmental restoration.
A second lawsuit also was filed by civil rights groups last month against the state and federal governments over practices at the Everglades facility, claiming detainees were denied access to the legal system. in Miami last week dismissed parts of the lawsuit which had been filed in Florida’s southern district and then moved the remaining counts against the state of Florida to the neighboring middle district.
Civil rights groups last Friday filed a third lawsuit over practices at the facility in federal court in Fort Myers, asking for a restraining order and a temporary injunction that would bar Florida agencies and their contractors from holding detainees at “Alligator Alcatraz.” They described “severe problems” at the facility which were “previously unheard-of in the immigration system.” Detainees were being held for weeks without any charges, they had disappeared from ICE’s online detainee locator and no one at the facility was making initial custody or bond determinations, the civil rights groups said.
Immigration is a federal issue, and Florida agencies and the private contractors hired by the state have no authority to operate the facility, the civil rights groups argued in asking that their lawsuit be certified as a class action.
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