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3rd Lawsuit Challenges Florida’s Authority to Run ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ and Hold People Without Charges

August 25, 2025 | FlaglerLive | 8 Comments

 in stark contrast to typical ICE (federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement) operations,”
Only a Florida facility could make ICE facilities look good in comparison. (Wikimedia Commons)

Calling it “exactly the kind of disaster that Congress took pains to avoid,” attorneys for immigrants held at a detention center in the Everglades filed a lawsuit alleging Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration lacks the authority to run the facility.

The lawsuit, filed Friday in the federal Middle District of Florida, is the third major legal challenge to the detention center, erected by the DeSantis’ administration as part of the state’s support of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts.

DeSantis and state officials maintain that they are operating the facility through what are known as 287(g) agreements, which local governments can enter with the federal government to provide training and authority to local police to help enforce immigration laws.

But the lawsuit filed Friday contends that the agreements do not give authority to state agencies or their contractors to run detention centers and that the officers who are working at the Everglades facility lack federally required training to participate in immigration-enforcement efforts.

“The lack of authority to operate the facility has resulted in unprecedented challenges that people in immigration detention typically do not face, including being held without charge, not receiving initial custody or bond determinations, not appearing in the detainee locator system, and not being able to access their attorneys or immigration court,” the lawsuit said.

Operations at the Everglades center, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” by state officials, “are in stark contrast to typical ICE (federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement) operations,” the lawyers argued.

The 287(g) agreements are part of a federal law known as 1357(g) that allows states to support federal immigration-enforcement efforts.

“This is an unprecedented attempt to use Section 1357(g) as authority for an independent state-run detention facility,” the lawsuit said. “In the thirty years since the statute was enacted, state officers have never claimed the authority to detain people under this statute, other than the short period after an arrest during transport to an ICE facility.”

The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Florida, Community Justice Project, and National Immigrant Justice Center filed the lawsuit on behalf of a detainee identified as “M.A.” and also are seeking class-action certification in the challenge.

The lawsuit asks a federal judge to issue a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction to bar the state from detaining people at the facility and to declare that the state lacks the authority to operate the Everglades detention center.

The federal law “does not provide authority for state agencies to hold immigration detainees during the removal process. And it certainly does not let them place detention in the hands of untrained, unsupervised private contractors who are not and cannot be deputized to perform immigration functions. By ignoring these standards, Florida has created exactly the kind of disaster that Congress took pains to avoid,” the lawsuit said.

Questions about the state’s authority to run the facility also have been raised in two other legal challenges.

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams on Thursday sided with environmental groups and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida in a lawsuit alleging that state and federal officials failed to comply with a federal law requiring an environmental-impact study be conducted before the detention center was erected.

Williams’ order gave the state 60 days to begin winding down the facility. Lawyers for DeSantis quickly asked the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. District Court of Appeals to put her ruling on hold while the state’s appeal proceeds.
Lawyers for DeSantis have argued, in part, in that case that the federal environmental law did not apply because the state is operating the facility.

Speaking to reporters Friday morning, the governor — who has fiercely defended the state’s immigrant-detention efforts — shrugged off Williams’ decision.

“We knew the minute this judge got the case, we knew exactly what she was going to do. This is not anything that was unexpected, but we will make sure to get the job done in the end,” he said.

In a separate lawsuit, attorneys representing detainees allege that people being held at the center have inadequate access to legal representation and confidential meetings with their attorneys.

The latest legal challenge said that court records in the other cases show the facility is “Florida-owned and Florida-operated.”

“State and federal officials have stated in court filings that Florida exercises ‘complete discretion’ over operations and over who is detained at the facility,” Thursday’s lawsuit said.

Numerous state agencies have 287(g) agreements allowing their law-enforcement officers to participate in immigration efforts, the lawsuit noted.

“But those agreements do not give any authority to the state agencies themselves — only to those individual employees who have been fully trained and certified by DHS (Department of Homeland Security),” the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit also said it is unknown how many state officers working at the facility have completed federally required training, which can take months.

DeSantis earlier this month announced that the state plans to convert a shuttered state prison in Baker County into a second immigrant-detention center. That facility will be staffed by members of Florida’s National Guard.

The Florida Department of Emergency Management is set to receive $605 million from the Trump administration for the state’s immigrant-detention efforts. The department hired contractors to help build and operate the Everglades facility, which can hold up to 4,000 people and is estimated to cost roughly $450 million per year.

The lawsuit alleges that federal law does not allow the private contractors to be “deputized to perform any immigration functions.”

The lawsuit also alleges that workers at the facility are pressuring detainees to sign voluntary deportation orders.

“This is something that ICE protocol forbids,” lawyers for the detainees wrote.

–Dara Kam, News Service of Florida

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Ed P says

    August 26, 2025 at 5:21 am

    United States legal service industry ( amount billed by lawyers) estimated 300-400 billion dollars annually.
    Federal judiciary annual spending 10 billion
    State 52 billion
    Court house capital cost hundreds of millions per building ( no totals available)
    Additional overhead and maintenance 51 million
    Policing 233 billion
    Total corrections spending 97.7 billion
    Rough estimates of a trillion dollars annually spent on the legal system in the US.
    You would think for that amount of money, the system would be a bit more functional and able to produce better results.
    Inequalities in outcomes, access to Justice, over criminalization, punitive focus, slow process, lack of transparency, and weaponization suggests the system has strayed from its core mission.

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  2. Greg says

    August 26, 2025 at 6:13 am

    Why does ACLU fight so hard for people that are illegally in this country? It seems like they just love illegals? If they are here illegal, they should just be arrested and r3moved, period.

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  3. Laurel says

    August 26, 2025 at 8:05 am

    The “party of law and order” sure loves to play outside the law, at taxpayers’ expense. Trump, DeSantis, Hegseth and Noem are a disgrace and should be removed from office immediately.

    Kilmar Albrego Garcia was deported, by Trump’s administration’s admission, by an “administrative error.” Yet, they continue to harass him, threaten to deport him to Uganda (for God’s sake) and label him with an assortment of accusations without proof, to the point of a childlike addition of a supposed tattoo on a photo, Photoshoped by Trump’s monkeys. They want to win at the expense of our Constitution. They don’t care about right and wrong, they just want to win, if you call that winning. Shameful.

    Just the name “Alligator Alcatraz” is at an incredibly immature level that who involved should not be in charge of anything other than Playdough.

    Now go ahead Trumpers, praise *Saint Ron* and *Messiah Don* and tell us again how bad, and scary, brown people are.

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  4. Laurel says

    August 26, 2025 at 8:08 am

    …and don’t forget pickle-headed Bondi, the other embarrassment of Florida.

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  5. Deborah Coffey says

    August 26, 2025 at 3:56 pm

    Good. There are hardly any criminals at all in the Florida concentration camp. Not one person got due process even though, @Greg above doesn’t know the LAWS in the United States of America. Ron is breaking tons of them just like Donny Boy is. Then again, real Fascists know that laws are not for THEM, they’re for EVERYONE ELSE.

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  6. Ray W, says

    August 26, 2025 at 8:05 pm

    According to the Daily Beast, this past July Joe Rogan took a position against President Trump’s mass deportation policy, saying:

    “The targeting of migrant workers — not cartel members, not gang members, not drug dealers. Just construction workers. Showing up in construction sites, raiding them. Gardeners. Like, really? I don’t think anybody would have signed up for that.”

    Make of this what you will.

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  7. Sherry says

    August 27, 2025 at 11:29 am

    @greg. . . The ACLU is absolutely wonderful fighting for the “Constitutional Rights” of “Human Beings” ! What exactly don’t you understand about “Innocent Until PROVEN Guilty”?
    Or, is it that your “Lord and Master” trump decides who is guilty?

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  8. Sherry says

    August 27, 2025 at 1:36 pm

    What a fuc@#$% Boondoggle at the expense of Florida Taxpayers! Have you had enough “winning” yet Maga? BTW, how’s your grocery bill?

    The latest on Inhumane, Stupid, AA:

    Florida official says ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ will likely be empty within days, email shows
    By KATE PAYNE and MIKE SCHNEIDER
    Updated 10:16 AM PDT, August 27, 2025

    TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A top Florida official says the controversial state-run immigration detention facility in the Everglades will likely be empty in a matter of days, even as Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration and the federal government fight a judge’s order to shutter the facility dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” by late October. That’s according to an email exchange shared with The Associated Press.

    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 Kevin Guthrie said “we are probably going to be down to 0 individuals within a few days.” Rojzman, and the executive assistant who sent the original email to Guthrie, both confirmed the veracity of the messages to the AP on Wednesday.

    A spokesperson for Guthrie, whose agency has overseen the construction and operation of the site, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    The facility was rapidly constructed two months ago with the goal of holding up to 3,000 detainees as part of President Donald Trump’s push to deport people in the U.S. illegally. At one point, it held almost 1,000 detainees, but U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., said that he was told during a tour last week that only 300 to 350 detainees remained. Three lawsuits challenging practices at the detention center have been filed, including one that estimated at least 100 detainees who had been at the facility have been deported. Others have been transferred to other immigration detention centers.

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