Environmental groups Friday filed a federal lawsuit seeking to halt construction and operation of a detention center for undocumented immigrants that has been dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” saying it threatens ecologically sensitive areas and species in the surrounding Everglades and Big Cypress National Preserve.
The lawsuit, filed by the group Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity, alleges that federal and state agencies have violated laws that, in part, require evaluating potential environmental impacts before such a project can move forward.
The facility is under construction at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, a remote site used for flight training. Gov. Ron DeSantis said Friday on Fox News that “intake” of undocumented immigrants could start by Tuesday.
“The hasty transformation of the site into a mass detention facility, which includes the installation of housing units, construction of sanitation and food services systems, industrial high-intensity lighting infrastructure, diesel power generators, substantial fill material altering the natural terrain, and provision of transportation logistics (including apparent planned use of the runway to receive and deport detainees) poses clear environmental impacts,” the lawsuit said. “The defendants, in their rush to build the center, have unlawfully bypassed the required environmental reviews. The direct and indirect harm to nearby wetlands, wildlife and air and water quality, and feasible alternatives to the action, must be considered under NEPA (a federal law known as the National Environmental Policy Act) before acting.”
The project has drawn national attention as Florida officials say they are trying to help President Donald Trump crack down on illegal immigration. DeSantis has brushed off arguments that the facility could harm the environment, saying Wednesday that opponents are “trying to use the Everglades as a pretext for the fact that they oppose immigration enforcement.”
“It isn’t like we are going to start doing permanent sewer and all the other things,” DeSantis said. “It’s all temporary. We’ll set it up and we’ll break it down. This isn’t our first rodeo. The impact will be zero.”
The lawsuit, filed in the federal Southern District of Florida, names as defendants U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem; U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Todd Lyons; Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie; and Miami-Dade County. The county owns the site, which is also partly in Collier County.
While Florida has taken the lead in building and planning to operate the facility, the federal government will pay for it.
Attorneys from the Center for Biological Diversity, the Earthjustice legal organization and the Coffey Burlington law firm contend in the 27-page lawsuit that the federal and state agencies have violated the National Environmental Policy Act and a law known as the Administrative Procedure Act.
Also, they allege a violation of the Miami-Dade County code and that the state Division of Emergency Management “has no independent legislative authority to construct and manage a correctional facility.”
The lawsuit said the National Environmental Policy Act requires federal agencies to prepare evaluations of projects that can significantly affect the environment. It said, for example, that the planned detention center is in an area that serves as habitat for endangered and threatened species such as the Florida panther.
“The (detention) facility and associated operations will use and impair the Big Cypress National Preserve by causing direct and indirect harm to its wetlands, wildlife and air and water quality,” the lawsuit said. “These impacts will result in the degradation of the natural, scenic, hydrologic, floral and faunal and recreational values for which the preserve was created.”
While the lawsuit seeks an injunction, DeSantis’ appearance Friday on the “Fox & Friends” program on Fox News showed extensive activity at the site. Trucks, other vehicles and equipment could be seen in the background, and DeSantis walked into a large tent-like structure that would house detainees.
“This is going to be a force multiplier, and we’re really happy to be working with the federal government to satisfy President Trump’s mandate,” DeSantis said.
–Jim Saunders, Tom Urban, News Service of Florida
Bo Peep says
Let’s keep it going and bring back chain gangs to complete some of the maintenance of public areas as well.
Ray W, says
Some 25 years ago, I represented a young mother of multiple children, including an ESE son who grown to a size big enough to physically overcome his teachers and fellow students. Her husband worked two jobs, but his earning minimal pay per hour, finances were tight. She couldn’t work at night, because her husband worked day and night, but she could work short-term hours while her children were in school. She had been convicted of embezzling funds from her boss (as I recall the amount was two or three hundred dollars) and she had been ordered to pay restitution during the term of her probation.
During the short probationary term, she was called from the school between one and two times per week on average to pick up her violent child, causing her to lose job after job after only a few weeks of work, if that.
While she met every other term of her probation, she had been unable to pay restitution because she just couldn’t keep a job, so her supervising probation officer filed a violation of probation affidavit.
At the time, and still today, a person’s probation cannot be violated for failure to pay restitution unless the State can prove that the person did not try to work to earn the money. The probation officer testified that my client repeatedly obtained jobs, only to lose the jobs nearly always immediately when she had to leave work to take her son home from school. The trial judge found that she had made a good faith effort to work, an effort that had been interrupted through no fault of her own.
Undeterred, the prosecutor asked the court to return her to the original terms of probation, which was fine under the law. But the prosecutor then requested that the judge add a condition of probation that when she got her next job, she be required to turn over any money she earned as restitution, instead of the amount per month the judge had originally set.
I answered that the suggestion fell over the line of involuntary servitude, established in the Thirteenth Amendment and that it was violated double jeopardy for a judge to expand one’s terms of probation without finding that one had violated her terms of probation. The judge agreed with me on both grounds.
Section 1 of the Thirteenth Amendment reads:
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
Over the decades, courts have issued opinions defining involuntary servitude. This form of servitude “generally involves compulsion of a person’s labor through the use of physical force, legal action, or threats thereof.”
In 2000, via the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, our federal Congress voted to expand the definition of involuntary servitude to include servitude maintained through nonviolent coercion, i.e., psychologically coerced servitude.
Apparently, this will need to be repeated hundreds of times for the intellectually dense among us who openly fantasize about violating other people’s rights.
While it is a misdemeanor to cross the nation’s borders without seeking documentation, it is a civil infraction, not a crime, for an undocumented immigrant to continue to live and work within the borders of the nation. Immigrants cannot be jailed as criminals for simply living and working within the United States. But they can be civilly detained for purposes of deportation after a hearing. In other words, deportation, in most cases, is not a criminal penalty; it is a civil remedy.
Yes, if one crosses the border a second time without seeking documentation, after having been deported, it becomes a crime to live within the borders of the nation, but most of the undocumented immigrants living here do not fit that definition.
I understand the vengeful fantasy world inhabited by those among us who think chain gangs work or that involuntary servitude derived from civil commitment proceedings is legal. A significant portion of our population believes that vengeance is the answer in a nation founded on concepts of justice. They are wrong.
FlaPharmTech says
APNews is covering my fellow Floridians, a whole lotta ppl, protesting this Alligator Alcatraz abomination. Turning Florida Sensiblue!
I know, Associated Press is not exactly on the radar of my PC neighbors, but give it a look.
Joe D says
I remember the original ( I think…Flaglerlive ) article from several years back describing the AIRPORT IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE… near Miami.
The original purpose fell through, so then it was BASICALLY use as a “touch and go” air flight training facility. I remember the article stating there was basically little there except for the airstrip itself…minimal building, only basic roads to and from
Leave it to our ILLUSTRIOUS GOVERNOR RON (still trying to impressed our National Fearless Leader, for
(maybe) a future position…since RON is term limited, and the hopes of his wife Casey to become the next DeSantis “puppet governor”…have SIGNIFICANTLY DIMMED (in my opinion), after the questionable management of “donated” MEDICAID settlement funds).
How are you going to supply clean water, manage sewage and run off water? How much diesel fuel oil is going to have to be SAFELY navigated through the EVERGLADES? Currently there is ALMOST NOTHING THERE?!? Not affect the environment? How can housing 1000 immigrants in that small an area, NOT AFFECT THE ENVIRONMENT?
Is the plan to toss up essentially reinforced tents to house 1000 illegal immigrants ( most who have not had their “day in court” to defend themselves against any REAL crime other than just BEING HERE)? Since a PRIOR article seemed to illicit multiple negative community comments about prison inmates not DESERVING AC or working toilets, etc.
I hope the FlaglerLive community remembers it can get to 110 degrees + with the heat index there…. And what do you do with APPROACHING STORMS?…or is that the UNSPOKEN PLAN all along…OPPS? We just lost 50 “inmates” to heat stroke…or OPPS, we thought those reinforced tent could withstand category 4 winds…”OUR BAD!”
There simply HAS to be a more HUMANE PLAN…