Alligator Alcatraz can stay open, appeals court rules, rejecting call for review
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“Crocodile Alcatraz”, immigration detention center Florida EvergladesAn appeals court ruled Tuesday that the plant can remain open, upholding its earlier decision to block a judge’s order to halt operations because the plant did not comply with federal environmental law.
In a 2-1 decision, a majority of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals found that the state-run facility was not under federal control and was not subject to federal law requiring an environmental impact review.
“Florida officials, not federal, built the facility,” the majority wrote. “They control the land and built the facility ‘entirely’ at state expense.”
The legal dispute centers in part on the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a federal law that requires agencies to evaluate environmental impacts before major actions.
THE LAWYER SAID THAT THE GUARDS IN ‘ALLIGATOR ALCATRAZ’ BEAT HIM AND SPRAYED HIM WITH PEPPER PEPPER
The appeals court ruled that the state-run facility was not under federal control and was not required to comply with federal law requiring an environmental impact review. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
Florida did not receive any federal reimbursement when U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams issued a preliminary injunction last year ordering a phase-out of operations, the court wrote. Williams found that a federal repayment plan had in fact already been established.
The appeals court paused Williams’ decision, just days after it was handed down in August, until a hearing earlier this month.
Dissenting from the appeals court’s latest ruling, Judge Nancy Abudu wrote that immigration is a federal responsibility and that the federal government cannot abdicate its authority just because Florida officials are building an immigrant detention center.
“The facility would not have been built and would not have been used as an immigration detention center without the request of the federal defendants,” Abudu said. he said. “The evidence of federal control is perhaps most evident when we recognize that immigration remains uniquely and solely within the jurisdiction of the federal government.”
The detention center was built last year by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration to support President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda. (Getty Images)
Two of the environmental groups that filed the lawsuit — Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity — said they would continue to pursue the case when it returns to Williams for further litigation.
“This fight is not over yet,” Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades, said in a statement. “Alligator Alcatraz was hastily erected in one of the most fragile ecosystems in the country, without even the most basic environmental review, at great human and ecological cost.”
The facility is located on the site of the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, an area surrounded by protected wetlands within the Everglades ecosystem, according to court filings.
Officials in the Sunshine State also built a second building immigrant detention center In North Florida.
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Environmental advocates protest the “Alligator Alcatraz” immigrant detention center in Florida. (Mike Stocker/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP)
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Earlier this month, the lawyer for two immigrants detained at the “Crocodile Alcatraz” said in a court affidavit that guards severely beat the detainees and pepper-sprayed them, causing injuries to their heads, shoulders and wrists.
“Officers beat several individuals during this incident and broke the wrist of another individual who was taken into custody,” attorney Katherine Blankenship wrote.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
