A federal appeals court lifted an injunction that ordered Florida to dismantle its “Alligator Alcatraz” immigrant detention facility in the Florida Everglades.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta ruled against environmentalism groups and the Miccosukee Tribe in their lawsuit aimed at closing down the facility for violating federal environmental laws, Politico reported.
The decision concluded plaintiffs failed to prove the facility is under federal oversight or funded by the U.S. government, or that a federal environmental review was required under the National Environmental Policy Act.
William Pryor
“The only federal action the environmentalists can identify is the decision not to conduct an environmental review,” Chief Judge William Pryor wrote for the majority. “And that decision alone, as all parties agree, is not final agency action.”
A dissenting judge called the ruling “just plain wrong” because the detention center was established at the request of the Trump administration.
“In doing so, the majority has rendered the people actually detained in the facility and Florida’s cherished environment protected by no one, and vulnerable to the whims of anyone,” Judge Nancy Abudu wrote for the minority.
Nancy Abudu
The decision overturns a district court’s August order that the facility located in the Big Cyprus Preserve be vacated and dismantled. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security at the time said it was in the process of removing immigrants from the center.
“This fight is far from over,” said Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades, one of the plaintiffs in the litigation. “‘Alligator Alcatraz’ was hastily erected in one of the most fragile ecosystems in the country without the most basic environmental review, at immense human and ecological cost. We are pursuing every legal avenue available to right this wrong.”
Eve Samples
The facility was erected in just eight days in June 2025 on the grounds of a remote airfield. It was designed to hold as many as 3,000 immigrants detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Amnesty International issued a report in December that documented numerous instances of human rights violations, including torture, inhumane living conditions and denying detainees access to legal representation.
“These findings confirm a deliberate system built to punish, dehumanize and hide the suffering of people in detention,” the global human rights group said.
The facility is also terrible for the delicate ecology of the region, Samples said. “‘Alligator Alcatraz’ will go down in history as a boondoggle to taxpayers and a flagrant assault on the Everglades, and we look forward to returning to the district court to advance our case to shut it down.”
The detention center also tramples on the rights of conservationists who contributed property to protect the environment, said Tania Galloni, managing attorney for the Florida office of Earthjustice.
“The people who set aside public lands for the Big Cypress National Preserve did not intend for it to house a massive jail, filled with blaring lights, generating runoff from a parade of trucks hauling in water and hauling out sewage, spewing pollution from diesel generators, and causing the shocking human misery for those who are detained there,” she said.
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