Alligator Alcatraz must close, but the fight isn’t over
A GULAG IS STILL A GULAG, BY ANY OTHER NAME
Miacel Spotted Elk
Mon 25 August 2025
Grist
The Miccosukee Tribe makes its home in the Everglades, where a tribal village sits only a few miles from the federal immigration detention center called Alligator Alcatraz. Residents have for weeks lived with vehicles coming and going around the clock, stadium lights illuminating the once-dark nighttime sky, and the facility restricting access to the game they rely upon for food.
That is no longer the case.
A federal judge has ordered the U.S. government to stop sending detainees to the facility and begin dismantling it within 60 days. In making her ruling, Judge Kathleen Williams sided with the tribe and environmentalists who argued that state and federal officials violated a federal law that requires an environmental review before proceeding with any federal construction project. The judge’s order also prohibits further construction at the site.
The judge granted the preliminary injunction sought by the tribe and a coalition of environmental organizations. Although the litigation will continue — Florida, which is managing the center on behalf of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, plans to appeal — tribal leaders hailed the decision and vowed to continue fighting to protect their land.
“We felt good. I felt good personally, but I know that this is only the first step in the legal process,” said Pete Osceola Jr., a long-term tribal lawmaker. “I believe that my tribe is willing to go the distance to preserve our rights and our culture.”
In her 82-page ruling, the judge posed a question that goes to the heart of the case: Why build a detention center in the middle of the Everglades and so close to a tribal community?
Williams recognized that, in addition to failing to conduct an environmental review, the U.S. government did not consult the Miccosukee ahead of the center’s construction. Such consultations are often legally required for any federal projects on historic sites, including on or near tribal land. In making the ruling, Williams cited Hualapai Indian Tribe v. Haaland, in which the tribe challenged a federal plan to extract lithium from a Bureau of Land Management site near a hot spring the tribe considers sacred. In that case, a judge ruled that the agency failed to consider alternatives before permitting the project and halted it.
The Everglades have served as a refuge and home to the Miccosukee since the Seminole Wars of the 19th century. The site of the detention center, built on Big Cypress National Reserve about 50 miles from Miami, also has particular significance to environmentalists. Alligator Alcatraz was built atop a former airfield that was built in the late 1960s successfully halted by environmentalists like Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, who founded Friends of the Everglades. That organization, along with Earthjustice and the Center for Biological Diversity, sought the injunction alongside the tribe.
“Our well being is intertwined, and that’s why Congress created the National Environmental Policy Act and other landmark environmental laws to safeguard the health and welfare of people by requiring the government to carefully and publicly consider the impacts of its actions on our land, water, air and biodiversity,” Elise Bennett, Florida director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said during a press conference on Friday.
The judge seemed to have felt the same way, ruling that the detention center poses a risk to the environment and to the water supply that the Miccosukee and others rely upon. “The project creates irreparable harm in the form of habitat loss and increased mortality to endangered species in the area,” she wrote.
Williams’ ruling is a setback for the detention center, the first state-run facility built to house detainees for ICE, and could impact any attempt to open others like it. The case brought by the Miccosukee and the environmentalists “kind of set a precedent for this being a way to halt environmental harms from these immigrant detention centers,” said Michelle Lynn Edwards, a sociologist and professor at Texas State University. “I mean, this is not the only one.”
Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” signed into law last month, earmarks approximately $45 billion for new immigrant detention centers, and the Washington Post reports that several are in planning stages across the country. Many are located in states with large tribal populations, including Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Colorado.
Edwards studies the link between federal environmental reviews and historically marginalized groups when federal agencies undertake projects, such as tribes, and can see environmental law being used to challenge future ICE detention sites. ”If these lawsuits are successful, then I do think that that would be something that would be used in other locations as well,” she said.
Osceola agrees, and the Miccosukee consider this a land and an Indigenous rights issue. “Any court decision involving Native tribes is a precedent,” he said. Osceola believes the case has the momentum to go before the Supreme Court eventually, and recent steps taken by the defendants support this. Florida has already filed an appeal. “This is not going to deter us,” Governor Ron DeSantis told reporters after the ruling. “We’re going to continue working on the deportations, advancing that mission.”
In a separate case challenging the legality of Alligator Alcatraz, legal groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union sued the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and DeSantis, alleging that it restricted migrants’ access to legal counsel. The agency has also rejected allegations that the facility is unsanitary and crowded.
Although Williams’ ruling is a setback for Alligator Alcatraz and the federal government, Osceola doesn’t think it should be considered a total victory. The issue at the center of the case — the government’s disregard for tribal sovereignty — remains. “As a native, as a Miccasukee, it’s a daily issue,” he said. “And I just want to make sure that people don’t forget these issues are not dead yet.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Alligator Alcatraz must close, but the fight isn’t over on Aug 25, 2025.
Alligator Alcatraz could be shut down. Ron DeSantis has a backup plan
Oliver O'Connell
Sat 23 August 2025
Oliver O'Connell
Sat 23 August 2025
THE INDEPENDENT
Alligator Alcatraz could be shut down. Ron DeSantis has a backup plan
Florida’s controversial 3,000-bed “Alligator Alcatraz” immigrant detention center could be shut down as soon as this fall after a wave of legal challenges.
But the state’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has a backup plan, and Donald Trump’s administration claims that a federal judge’s order to temporarily shut down parts of the facility — which could become permanent — will not halt the president’s aggressive anti-immigration agenda.
Immigrants are expected to be detained at other facilities in the state instead.
On Thursday, a federal judge ruled that no more detainees can be sent to the facility, which was built in a matter of days deep in the Everglades on an airstrip. The state can continue to detain immigrants who are currently imprisoned there until they are deported, according to the judge.
There was widespread outrage over the very notion of the facility when it was announced, with state and federal officials officially naming the detention camp after the notorious California prison, due to the threatening wildlife that surrounds it, which the Trump administration touted as a deterrent to people escaping.
Migrants are confined to cages with bunk beds, enduring Florida’s sweltering summer heat, pests and rationed meals. A separate federal lawsuit accuses the facility of blocking detainees from legal counsel and forcing people into “overcrowded, unsanitary, and harsh conditions” with inadequate food and “excessive use of force” from guards that sent at least one man to a hospital.
Members of Congress and state lawmakers who visited were stunned by the conditions they witnessed, and they demanded its immediate closure.
A preliminary injunction was issued this week in a federal lawsuit brought by environmental groups and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida.
Judge Kathleen Williams' ruling on Thursday follows serious concerns from the Miccosukee Tribe, a Native American community whose reservation lies within miles of the facility, about the development's impact on their land and the environmentally sensitive Everglades.
“The project creates irreparable harm in the form of habitat loss and increased mortality to endangered species in the area,” Judge Williams said in the order. The further installation of any lighting, fencing, paving, tents, or buildings is forbidden, and “all generators, gas, sewage, and other waste and waste receptacles that were installed to support this project” must be removed in 60 days.
President Donald Trump flew down to open the Alligator Alcatraz deportation facility. Now it may close (Reuters)
While the injunction is only temporary until a court can make a final decision in the case, the state and federal governments have appealed the decision and requested that the judge rule on enforcement while their appeal is pending, asking that she make a decision by Monday at 5 p.m.
Meanwhile, a third federal lawsuit against the facility — filed by immigrants’ rights advocates including the American Civil Liberties Union — challenges Florida’s authority to detain people there.
The suit targets the state’s use of what it describes as the “expansive and unlawful use” of the federal 287(g) program, which allows local and state law enforcement agencies to enforce federal immigration law.
Responding to Judge Williams’ decision, Governor DeSantis said on Friday that it was “not unexpected,” and the state would “respond accordingly.”
“We’re not going to be deterred,” DeSantis said. “We are totally in the right on this,” he added, referring to the president’s mass deportation program that Americans largely oppose.
Florida’s plan, it appears, is to double down on state-run detention centers and a second 2,000-capacity facility, dubbed “Deportation Depot,” at a shuttered state prison that closed in 2021 due to staff shortages.
That prison — located within a rural stretch of the state between Tallahassee and Jacksonville — will operate inside Baker Correctional Institution, joining a new wave of state-run detention centers as ICE looks to build capacity to detain more immigrants in similar facilities across the country.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, pictured at the opening of the Alligator Alcatraz facility, says he will not be deterred from the state's plans for mass deportations (AFP via Getty Images)
“The reason for this is not to just house people indefinitely. We want to process, stage, and then return illegal aliens to their home country. That is the name of the game,” DeSantis said at a press conference announcing the detention center last week.
Speaking to NewsNation on Saturday, border czar Tom Homan said that “they’re not going to stop us doing what we’re doing.”
“We’ll follow the judge’s order, and we’ll litigate and we’ll appeal it,” he said. “But [the] bottom line is, we’re going to continue to arrest public safety threats and national security threats every day across this country.”
Homan said that ICE would simply adapt.
“If we have to send them to another facility. That’s what we’re going to do,” he said. “That’s why the president has asked for 100,000 beds in the Big, Beautiful Bill. So, we’re going to build 100,000 beds, so we’re not going to have a lack of bed space.”
White House border czar Tom Homan says ‘radical judges’ may slow his mission but ‘they’re not going to stop us’ (AP)
The Independent reported earlier this month that ICE has inked nearly 800 federal 287(g) program agreements covering 40 states, funded by $45 billion in new funding to expand ICE capacity.
In Indiana, officials announced plans earlier this month to expand the Miami Correctional Centre, located 70 miles north of Indianapolis. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem stated that the facility will have the capacity to detain approximately 1,000 immigrants. Officials have already dubbed this new detention centre the "Speedway Slammer".
Separately, the Trump administration is reportedly in talks with Louisiana officials to detain immigrants at the infamous Angola prison. This facility, the largest maximum-security prison in the country, was built on a former plantation owned by a slaveholder. The Wall Street Journal reported that Angola, which currently holds around 4,300 people, mostly convicted of violent crimes, could house 450 immigrants as early as next month.
‘Alligator Alcatraz’ may be shut down before Halloween. Florida already has a backup plan
Alaa Elassar,
Work progresses on a new migrant detention facility dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz," at Dade-Collier Training and Transition facility in the Florida Everglades on July 4. - Rebecca Blackwell/AP
DeSantis is doubling down on immigrant detention centers in his state – including the announcement of a new immigration detention facility he dubbed “Deportation Depot,” which can hold as many as 2,000 detainees.
For now, the installation of any additional industrial style lighting is prohibited, as is any paving, filling, excavating, fencing, or erecting any additional building or tents at “Alligator Alcatraz.” The order also mandates no detainees beyond those currently housed at the facility can be moved there.
Lighting, fencing and “all generators, gas, sewage, and other waste and waste receptacles that were installed to support this project” and added to Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport must also be removed within 60 days of the order, Williams said, effectively shutting the facility that’s become a centerpiece of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown – which Americans largely oppose.
“Alligator Alcatraz remains operational, and we will not stop in our mission to detain, deport, and deliver for the American people,” Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said in a social media post Friday.
Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin condemned Williams’ ruling as an attempt to derail the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown efforts.
“This ruling from an activist judge ignores the fact that this land has already been developed for a decade,” McLaughlin said. “It is another attempt to prevent the President from fulfilling the American people’s mandate to remove the worst of the worst including gang members, murderers, pedophiles, terrorists, and rapists from our country.”
Williams was nominated by former President Barack Obama.
In June she found Uthmeier, who has championed “Alligator Alcatraz,” in civil contempt of court after he appeared to publicly defy her order to pause a new state immigration law making it a crime to enter Florida illegally.
DeSantis also called Williams an “activist judge” at his briefing Friday.
“This is a judge that was not going to give us a fair shake. This was preordained, very much an activist judge that is trying to do policy from the bench,” the governor said.
Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava called the ruling a victory for freedom, local communities and the environment.
People take part in a boat tour in Everglades National Park in Florida on May 6, 2024. - Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto/Getty Images
“Most importantly it is a victory for the families who have endured unimaginable hardship because of what happens at this facility,” Cava said. “The people who have been held here, the detainees have faced conditions that have shocked our community, our nation and in fact, the world, conditions that have betrayed the very values that define America.”
Around 400 people are still detained at “Alligator Alcatraz,” the mayor said, adding that she doesn’t know the exact number since she hasn’t been permitted to enter the facility.
The outcome of the state’s appeal and whether the facility will be permanently closed remain uncertain.
“We can’t predict exactly what will happen. They have appealed other rulings by Judge Williams that have not been sustained,” Cava said. “In this case, it’s on environmental basis and hopefully, higher courts will sustain her ruling.”
Legal expert Michael Romano, director of the Three Strikes Project at Stanford Law School, says what happens next hinges on the outcome of the appeal
“A preliminary injunction is just that – it’s preliminary. They usually stand up, but let’s say the appeal fails,” Romano told CNN. “It’s not the end of the story. They would then go for what’s called a permanent injunction, and they’ll appeal that. So it’s going to drag on for a while.”
It remains to be seen whether the DeSantis administration will fall in line with the injunction’s demands, including halting new detainee arrivals and tearing down the mandated infrastructure as ordered by Williams, or if they’ll resist.
“If you defy a court order, you can be held in contempt, and I think there have been a number of circumstances within the new (Trump) administration where they have tested the court’s willingness to impose a contempt order,” Romano said.
“The administration definitely tests limits, but they don’t always go over them,” he added. “I think it’s safe to predict that they will test the limits of this court if they can’t get the decision reversed.”
‘Inhumane’ facility serves as model for other immigration detention centers
Members of Congress and state representatives who were given a limited tour last month to inspect conditions described the facility as “inhumane,” with detainees “packed into cages, wall-to-wall humans, 32 detainees per cage,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who represents Florida’s 25th Congressional District, said at the time.
Each cage contained three small toilets with attached sinks, which detainees use for drinking water and brushing their teeth.
Lawmakers were concerned about reports of unhygienic conditions due to toilets not working and “feces being spread everywhere,” but were denied access from viewing units where migrants are currently detained and were not permitted to view the medical facilities, Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost, who was also on the tour, said.
Despite criticism and reports of harsh conditions, “Alligator Alcatraz” is serving as a model for other states to establish similar facilities, including the “Deportation Depot” in northern Florida, as well as additional immigration detention centers in Indiana and Nebraska.
DeSantis’ “Deportation Depot” will be located within the Baker Correctional Institution, a temporarily closed state prison about 45 miles west of Jacksonville near the Osceola National Forest.
“The reason of this is not to just house people indefinitely. We want to process, stage and then return illegal aliens to their home country,” DeSantis said last week.
The facility will likely be ready soon, Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie said.
In Bunker Hill, Indiana, the Miami Correctional Facility is offering 1,000 unused beds to ICE for detaining migrants. The Department of Homeland Security has nicknamed the facility the “Speedway Slammer,” according to a DHS news release.
In Nebraska, Republican Gov. Jim Pillen announced on August 19 that ICE is establishing a detention center in McCook, a city with a population of around 7,000. The Department of Homeland Security has dubbed the facility the “Cornhusker Clink.”
Ruling points to environmental concerns and impact on Indigenous lands
Cava said it was “painful” to watch state leaders dismiss the community’s concerns and the potential environmental impact on both the land and the people living nearby, “particularly the tribe whose sacred lands are being violated.”
The migrant detention center is surrounded by Everglades National Park, Big Cypress National Preserve and the tribal lands of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, a plaintiff in the case.
Everglades National Park is an environmentally critical subtropical wetland, home to threatened species and one of the world’s largest mangrove ecosystems. It also provides essential services to South Florida, including drinking water for more than 8 million Floridians and protection from hurricanes and floods, according to the National Wildlife Federation.
Holey Land Francis S. Taylor Wildlife Management Area in the Everglades, Florida. - Jeff Greenberg/Getty Images
“Every Florida governor, every Florida senator, and countless local and national political figures, including presidents, have publicly pledged their unequivocal support for the restoration, conservation, and protection of the Everglades,” Williams said in the order. “This Order does nothing more than uphold the basic requirements of legislation designed to fulfill those promises.”
Williams said the facility has not been compliant with its obligations under the National Environmental Policy Act. NEPA, signed by President Richard Nixon, is considered one of the foundational environmental laws formed at the beginning of the modern environmental movement.
Prior to the construction of the facility, the defendants were required, under NEPA, to conduct an environmental assessment, or issue an environmental impact statement, a government document that outlines the impact of a proposed project on its surrounding environment, but they did neither.
“The EIS or EA must precede any ‘major Federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environment,’” Williams wrote in her ruling. “Under the statutory language, the Defendants cannot put the cart before the horse — they cannot construct a facility and, then only in response to litigation such as the instant case, decide to fulfill their legal obligations.”
According to the ruling and testimony from the Miccosukee Tribe, runoff and wastewater discharge from “Alligator Alcatraz” pose a threat to the water supply in the Miccosukee Reserved Area, home to 80% of tribe members located just a few miles downstream from the facility.
The court also reviewed plans and photos showing that operation of the facility has so far involved paving approximately 800,000 square feet of land and the installation of industrial lighting impacting the night sky at least 20 to 30 miles away.
Increased lighting from the project will push animals out of the area, Director of Water Resources Amy Castaneda and Fish and Wildlife Department Director Dr. Marcel Bozas said during testimony, according to the ruling.
The artificial lighting also reduces the endangered panther habitat “by 2,000 acres, as studies suggest panthers are unlikely to come within 500 meters of a large artificial light source,” Williams writes in the ruling.
Bozas also pointed to the facility’s interruption of the tribe’s traditions of hunting, fishing, and collection of ceremonial and medicinal plants around the site, specifically on off-road trails with trailheads on the detention facility’s fence line, which Williams has ordered to be removed so the tribe has access to the trailheads again.
“This is not our first fight for our land and rights,” Talbert Cypress, the chairman of the tribe, said in a news release. “We will always stand up for our culture, our sovereignty, and for the Everglades.”
CNN’s Devon Sayers and Isabel Rosales contributed to this report.
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Alligator Alcatraz could be shut down. Ron DeSantis has a backup plan
Florida’s controversial 3,000-bed “Alligator Alcatraz” immigrant detention center could be shut down as soon as this fall after a wave of legal challenges.
But the state’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has a backup plan, and Donald Trump’s administration claims that a federal judge’s order to temporarily shut down parts of the facility — which could become permanent — will not halt the president’s aggressive anti-immigration agenda.
Immigrants are expected to be detained at other facilities in the state instead.
On Thursday, a federal judge ruled that no more detainees can be sent to the facility, which was built in a matter of days deep in the Everglades on an airstrip. The state can continue to detain immigrants who are currently imprisoned there until they are deported, according to the judge.
There was widespread outrage over the very notion of the facility when it was announced, with state and federal officials officially naming the detention camp after the notorious California prison, due to the threatening wildlife that surrounds it, which the Trump administration touted as a deterrent to people escaping.
Migrants are confined to cages with bunk beds, enduring Florida’s sweltering summer heat, pests and rationed meals. A separate federal lawsuit accuses the facility of blocking detainees from legal counsel and forcing people into “overcrowded, unsanitary, and harsh conditions” with inadequate food and “excessive use of force” from guards that sent at least one man to a hospital.
Members of Congress and state lawmakers who visited were stunned by the conditions they witnessed, and they demanded its immediate closure.
A preliminary injunction was issued this week in a federal lawsuit brought by environmental groups and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida.
Judge Kathleen Williams' ruling on Thursday follows serious concerns from the Miccosukee Tribe, a Native American community whose reservation lies within miles of the facility, about the development's impact on their land and the environmentally sensitive Everglades.
“The project creates irreparable harm in the form of habitat loss and increased mortality to endangered species in the area,” Judge Williams said in the order. The further installation of any lighting, fencing, paving, tents, or buildings is forbidden, and “all generators, gas, sewage, and other waste and waste receptacles that were installed to support this project” must be removed in 60 days.
President Donald Trump flew down to open the Alligator Alcatraz deportation facility. Now it may close (Reuters)
While the injunction is only temporary until a court can make a final decision in the case, the state and federal governments have appealed the decision and requested that the judge rule on enforcement while their appeal is pending, asking that she make a decision by Monday at 5 p.m.
Meanwhile, a third federal lawsuit against the facility — filed by immigrants’ rights advocates including the American Civil Liberties Union — challenges Florida’s authority to detain people there.
The suit targets the state’s use of what it describes as the “expansive and unlawful use” of the federal 287(g) program, which allows local and state law enforcement agencies to enforce federal immigration law.
Responding to Judge Williams’ decision, Governor DeSantis said on Friday that it was “not unexpected,” and the state would “respond accordingly.”
“We’re not going to be deterred,” DeSantis said. “We are totally in the right on this,” he added, referring to the president’s mass deportation program that Americans largely oppose.
Florida’s plan, it appears, is to double down on state-run detention centers and a second 2,000-capacity facility, dubbed “Deportation Depot,” at a shuttered state prison that closed in 2021 due to staff shortages.
That prison — located within a rural stretch of the state between Tallahassee and Jacksonville — will operate inside Baker Correctional Institution, joining a new wave of state-run detention centers as ICE looks to build capacity to detain more immigrants in similar facilities across the country.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, pictured at the opening of the Alligator Alcatraz facility, says he will not be deterred from the state's plans for mass deportations (AFP via Getty Images)
“The reason for this is not to just house people indefinitely. We want to process, stage, and then return illegal aliens to their home country. That is the name of the game,” DeSantis said at a press conference announcing the detention center last week.
Speaking to NewsNation on Saturday, border czar Tom Homan said that “they’re not going to stop us doing what we’re doing.”
“We’ll follow the judge’s order, and we’ll litigate and we’ll appeal it,” he said. “But [the] bottom line is, we’re going to continue to arrest public safety threats and national security threats every day across this country.”
Homan said that ICE would simply adapt.
“If we have to send them to another facility. That’s what we’re going to do,” he said. “That’s why the president has asked for 100,000 beds in the Big, Beautiful Bill. So, we’re going to build 100,000 beds, so we’re not going to have a lack of bed space.”
White House border czar Tom Homan says ‘radical judges’ may slow his mission but ‘they’re not going to stop us’ (AP)
The Independent reported earlier this month that ICE has inked nearly 800 federal 287(g) program agreements covering 40 states, funded by $45 billion in new funding to expand ICE capacity.
In Indiana, officials announced plans earlier this month to expand the Miami Correctional Centre, located 70 miles north of Indianapolis. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem stated that the facility will have the capacity to detain approximately 1,000 immigrants. Officials have already dubbed this new detention centre the "Speedway Slammer".
Separately, the Trump administration is reportedly in talks with Louisiana officials to detain immigrants at the infamous Angola prison. This facility, the largest maximum-security prison in the country, was built on a former plantation owned by a slaveholder. The Wall Street Journal reported that Angola, which currently holds around 4,300 people, mostly convicted of violent crimes, could house 450 immigrants as early as next month.
‘Alligator Alcatraz’ may be shut down before Halloween. Florida already has a backup plan
Alaa Elassar,
CNN
Sat 23 August 2025
David Mourer visits the entrance to "Alligator Alcatraz" at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport on July 12, 2025, in Ochopee, Florida. - Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Nearly two months after the hasty and controversial birth of “Alligator Alcatraz,” a federal judge has slammed the brakes on the operation, ruling that no more detainees can be sent to the remote migrant detention camp deep in the marshy wetlands of the Everglades.
Built in just a matter of days, the facility garnered sharp criticism for its treatment of migrants who have been confined in cages amid sweltering heat, bug infestations and meager meals, prompting members of Congress and state representatives that witnessed the conditions to demand its immediate closure.
US District Judge Kathleen Williams on Thursday issued a preliminary injunction in a federal lawsuit filed by environmental groups and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida. The Miccosukee Tribe, a Native American tribe whose reservation lies within miles of the facility, raised serious concerns about the impact the facility will have on their land and the environmentally sensitive area, including the plants and animals that inhabit the Everglades.
“The project creates irreparable harm in the form of habitat loss and increased mortality to endangered species in the area,” Williams said in the order.
A preliminary injunction is a temporary order put in place until a court can make a final decision in a case. The federal and state governments are attempting to appeal the judge’s order, according to court filings.
The state has requested the court temporarily halt enforcement of the federal judge’s order while the appeal is heard, arguing “the public interest will suffer irreparable injury” due to the preliminary injunction, including disruption of law enforcement response and financial losses. The state requested the judge rule on their request by Monday at 5 p.m.
“We got news last night that we had a judge try to upset the apple cart with respect to our deportation and detainee processing center down in South Florida at ‘Alligator Alcatraz.’ I just wanted to say this was not something that was unexpected,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a news conference Friday. “We knew that this would be something that will likely happen and we will respond accordingly.”
“We’re not going to be deterred,” DeSantis said. “We are totally in the right on this.”
Sat 23 August 2025
David Mourer visits the entrance to "Alligator Alcatraz" at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport on July 12, 2025, in Ochopee, Florida. - Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Nearly two months after the hasty and controversial birth of “Alligator Alcatraz,” a federal judge has slammed the brakes on the operation, ruling that no more detainees can be sent to the remote migrant detention camp deep in the marshy wetlands of the Everglades.
Built in just a matter of days, the facility garnered sharp criticism for its treatment of migrants who have been confined in cages amid sweltering heat, bug infestations and meager meals, prompting members of Congress and state representatives that witnessed the conditions to demand its immediate closure.
US District Judge Kathleen Williams on Thursday issued a preliminary injunction in a federal lawsuit filed by environmental groups and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida. The Miccosukee Tribe, a Native American tribe whose reservation lies within miles of the facility, raised serious concerns about the impact the facility will have on their land and the environmentally sensitive area, including the plants and animals that inhabit the Everglades.
“The project creates irreparable harm in the form of habitat loss and increased mortality to endangered species in the area,” Williams said in the order.
A preliminary injunction is a temporary order put in place until a court can make a final decision in a case. The federal and state governments are attempting to appeal the judge’s order, according to court filings.
The state has requested the court temporarily halt enforcement of the federal judge’s order while the appeal is heard, arguing “the public interest will suffer irreparable injury” due to the preliminary injunction, including disruption of law enforcement response and financial losses. The state requested the judge rule on their request by Monday at 5 p.m.
“We got news last night that we had a judge try to upset the apple cart with respect to our deportation and detainee processing center down in South Florida at ‘Alligator Alcatraz.’ I just wanted to say this was not something that was unexpected,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a news conference Friday. “We knew that this would be something that will likely happen and we will respond accordingly.”
“We’re not going to be deterred,” DeSantis said. “We are totally in the right on this.”
Work progresses on a new migrant detention facility dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz," at Dade-Collier Training and Transition facility in the Florida Everglades on July 4. - Rebecca Blackwell/AP
DeSantis is doubling down on immigrant detention centers in his state – including the announcement of a new immigration detention facility he dubbed “Deportation Depot,” which can hold as many as 2,000 detainees.
For now, the installation of any additional industrial style lighting is prohibited, as is any paving, filling, excavating, fencing, or erecting any additional building or tents at “Alligator Alcatraz.” The order also mandates no detainees beyond those currently housed at the facility can be moved there.
Lighting, fencing and “all generators, gas, sewage, and other waste and waste receptacles that were installed to support this project” and added to Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport must also be removed within 60 days of the order, Williams said, effectively shutting the facility that’s become a centerpiece of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown – which Americans largely oppose.
“Alligator Alcatraz remains operational, and we will not stop in our mission to detain, deport, and deliver for the American people,” Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said in a social media post Friday.
Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin condemned Williams’ ruling as an attempt to derail the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown efforts.
“This ruling from an activist judge ignores the fact that this land has already been developed for a decade,” McLaughlin said. “It is another attempt to prevent the President from fulfilling the American people’s mandate to remove the worst of the worst including gang members, murderers, pedophiles, terrorists, and rapists from our country.”
Williams was nominated by former President Barack Obama.
In June she found Uthmeier, who has championed “Alligator Alcatraz,” in civil contempt of court after he appeared to publicly defy her order to pause a new state immigration law making it a crime to enter Florida illegally.
DeSantis also called Williams an “activist judge” at his briefing Friday.
“This is a judge that was not going to give us a fair shake. This was preordained, very much an activist judge that is trying to do policy from the bench,” the governor said.
Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava called the ruling a victory for freedom, local communities and the environment.
People take part in a boat tour in Everglades National Park in Florida on May 6, 2024. - Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto/Getty Images
“Most importantly it is a victory for the families who have endured unimaginable hardship because of what happens at this facility,” Cava said. “The people who have been held here, the detainees have faced conditions that have shocked our community, our nation and in fact, the world, conditions that have betrayed the very values that define America.”
Around 400 people are still detained at “Alligator Alcatraz,” the mayor said, adding that she doesn’t know the exact number since she hasn’t been permitted to enter the facility.
The outcome of the state’s appeal and whether the facility will be permanently closed remain uncertain.
“We can’t predict exactly what will happen. They have appealed other rulings by Judge Williams that have not been sustained,” Cava said. “In this case, it’s on environmental basis and hopefully, higher courts will sustain her ruling.”
Legal expert Michael Romano, director of the Three Strikes Project at Stanford Law School, says what happens next hinges on the outcome of the appeal
“A preliminary injunction is just that – it’s preliminary. They usually stand up, but let’s say the appeal fails,” Romano told CNN. “It’s not the end of the story. They would then go for what’s called a permanent injunction, and they’ll appeal that. So it’s going to drag on for a while.”
It remains to be seen whether the DeSantis administration will fall in line with the injunction’s demands, including halting new detainee arrivals and tearing down the mandated infrastructure as ordered by Williams, or if they’ll resist.
“If you defy a court order, you can be held in contempt, and I think there have been a number of circumstances within the new (Trump) administration where they have tested the court’s willingness to impose a contempt order,” Romano said.
“The administration definitely tests limits, but they don’t always go over them,” he added. “I think it’s safe to predict that they will test the limits of this court if they can’t get the decision reversed.”
‘Inhumane’ facility serves as model for other immigration detention centers
Members of Congress and state representatives who were given a limited tour last month to inspect conditions described the facility as “inhumane,” with detainees “packed into cages, wall-to-wall humans, 32 detainees per cage,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who represents Florida’s 25th Congressional District, said at the time.
Each cage contained three small toilets with attached sinks, which detainees use for drinking water and brushing their teeth.
Lawmakers were concerned about reports of unhygienic conditions due to toilets not working and “feces being spread everywhere,” but were denied access from viewing units where migrants are currently detained and were not permitted to view the medical facilities, Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost, who was also on the tour, said.
Despite criticism and reports of harsh conditions, “Alligator Alcatraz” is serving as a model for other states to establish similar facilities, including the “Deportation Depot” in northern Florida, as well as additional immigration detention centers in Indiana and Nebraska.
DeSantis’ “Deportation Depot” will be located within the Baker Correctional Institution, a temporarily closed state prison about 45 miles west of Jacksonville near the Osceola National Forest.
“The reason of this is not to just house people indefinitely. We want to process, stage and then return illegal aliens to their home country,” DeSantis said last week.
The facility will likely be ready soon, Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie said.
In Bunker Hill, Indiana, the Miami Correctional Facility is offering 1,000 unused beds to ICE for detaining migrants. The Department of Homeland Security has nicknamed the facility the “Speedway Slammer,” according to a DHS news release.
In Nebraska, Republican Gov. Jim Pillen announced on August 19 that ICE is establishing a detention center in McCook, a city with a population of around 7,000. The Department of Homeland Security has dubbed the facility the “Cornhusker Clink.”
Ruling points to environmental concerns and impact on Indigenous lands
Cava said it was “painful” to watch state leaders dismiss the community’s concerns and the potential environmental impact on both the land and the people living nearby, “particularly the tribe whose sacred lands are being violated.”
The migrant detention center is surrounded by Everglades National Park, Big Cypress National Preserve and the tribal lands of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, a plaintiff in the case.
Everglades National Park is an environmentally critical subtropical wetland, home to threatened species and one of the world’s largest mangrove ecosystems. It also provides essential services to South Florida, including drinking water for more than 8 million Floridians and protection from hurricanes and floods, according to the National Wildlife Federation.
Holey Land Francis S. Taylor Wildlife Management Area in the Everglades, Florida. - Jeff Greenberg/Getty Images
“Every Florida governor, every Florida senator, and countless local and national political figures, including presidents, have publicly pledged their unequivocal support for the restoration, conservation, and protection of the Everglades,” Williams said in the order. “This Order does nothing more than uphold the basic requirements of legislation designed to fulfill those promises.”
Williams said the facility has not been compliant with its obligations under the National Environmental Policy Act. NEPA, signed by President Richard Nixon, is considered one of the foundational environmental laws formed at the beginning of the modern environmental movement.
Prior to the construction of the facility, the defendants were required, under NEPA, to conduct an environmental assessment, or issue an environmental impact statement, a government document that outlines the impact of a proposed project on its surrounding environment, but they did neither.
“The EIS or EA must precede any ‘major Federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environment,’” Williams wrote in her ruling. “Under the statutory language, the Defendants cannot put the cart before the horse — they cannot construct a facility and, then only in response to litigation such as the instant case, decide to fulfill their legal obligations.”
According to the ruling and testimony from the Miccosukee Tribe, runoff and wastewater discharge from “Alligator Alcatraz” pose a threat to the water supply in the Miccosukee Reserved Area, home to 80% of tribe members located just a few miles downstream from the facility.
The court also reviewed plans and photos showing that operation of the facility has so far involved paving approximately 800,000 square feet of land and the installation of industrial lighting impacting the night sky at least 20 to 30 miles away.
Increased lighting from the project will push animals out of the area, Director of Water Resources Amy Castaneda and Fish and Wildlife Department Director Dr. Marcel Bozas said during testimony, according to the ruling.
The artificial lighting also reduces the endangered panther habitat “by 2,000 acres, as studies suggest panthers are unlikely to come within 500 meters of a large artificial light source,” Williams writes in the ruling.
Bozas also pointed to the facility’s interruption of the tribe’s traditions of hunting, fishing, and collection of ceremonial and medicinal plants around the site, specifically on off-road trails with trailheads on the detention facility’s fence line, which Williams has ordered to be removed so the tribe has access to the trailheads again.
“This is not our first fight for our land and rights,” Talbert Cypress, the chairman of the tribe, said in a news release. “We will always stand up for our culture, our sovereignty, and for the Everglades.”
CNN’s Devon Sayers and Isabel Rosales contributed to this report.
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