Trump, Kristi Noem, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis have had a good time opening up and celebrating an immigrant detention facility that they call “Alligator Alcatraz.” They boast that immigrants who try to escape will be killed by alligators or snakes in the Everglades.
But the New York Times reported late Thursday that a federal judge ordered that the prison be shut down within the next 60 days because it endangers the environment. Judge Kathleen M. Williams was appointed by President Obama.
A federal judge in Miami gave the state of Florida 60 days to clear out the immigrant detention facility called Alligator Alcatraz, handing environmentalists and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians a win after they clashed with Gov. Ron DeSantis over the environmental impacts the makeshift site was having in the federally protected Everglades.
The ruling late Thursday from U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams, which forbids state officials from moving any other migrants there, deals a blow to what had become a marquee symbol of President Donald Trump’s immigration policy.
The environmentalists who sued called it “a huge relief for millions of people who love the Everglades.”
“This brutal detention center was burning a hole in the fabric of life that supports our most iconic wetland and a whole host of endangered species, from majestic Florida panthers to wizened wood storks,” attorney Elise Bennett of the Center for Biological Diversity said in a statement. “The judge’s order came just in time to stop it all from unraveling.”
The state filed a notice of appeal with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals less than an hour after the judge issued her order. DeSantis did not immediately comment.
Judge Kathleen M. Williams of the Federal District Court in Miami found that the state and federal governments had violated a federal law that requires an environmental review before any major federal construction project. Judge Williams partly granted a preliminary injunction sought by environmentalists and the Miccosukee Tribe, whose members live in the area. The detention center is surrounded by protected lands that form part of the sensitive Everglades ecological system.
The detention center presents risks to wetlands and to communities that depend on the Everglades for their water supply, including the Miccosukee, Judge Williams found.
“The project creates irreparable harm in the form of habitat loss and increased mortality to endangered species in the area,” she wrote.
Her ruling is preliminary, as the case will continue to be litigated. The state is expected to ask that the ruling be stayed, or kept from taking effect, as it pursues its appeal.
The Trump administration had argued that a review under the National Environmental Policy Act did not apply because while the center houses federal immigration detainees, it is run by the state. At the same time, the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis argued that its authority to operate the detention center came from an agreement with the federal government delegating some immigration enforcement powers to Florida.
In her ruling, Judge Williams said federal immigration enforcement is the “key driver” of the detention center’s construction. Because it is subject to federal funding, standards and direction, it is also subject to federal environmental laws, she concluded.
In making that determination, the judge wrote, the court will “‘adhere to the time-tested adage: If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck, then it’s a duck.’”