Florida Court allows “Alligator Alcatraz” to stay open

The Florida immigration detention facility known as Alligator Alcatraz can stay open after a federal appeals court put on hold a decision that would have seen much of the facility dismantled.

The 2-1 ruling by a panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit will effectively allow Alligator Alcatraz to stay open while a lawsuit challenging the detention center on environmental grounds works its way through the court system.

The Department of Homeland Security began moving detaineesout of the site late last month. But the state has said Alligator Alcatraz will ramp back up if the lower court ruling is overturned.

Last month, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams ordered the state of Florida and federal government to immediately stop expanding the facility and to start dismantling its fences, lights and generators within 60 days.

The judge sided with environmental groups and a Native American tribe who argued that Alligator Alcatraz — located in the middle of the sensitive Florida Everglades — should have been subject to federal environmental reviews.

But on Thursday, the panel of appellate court judges froze that ruling. The court concluded that state and federal officials are likely to succeed in showing that the site isn’t subject to the National Environmental Policy Act, because it is a state-operated facility and Florida has not yet received any federal reimbursement for the cost of running the site.

The majority ruling was written by Judge Barbara Lagoa and joined by Judge Elizabeth Branch, both of whom were nominated in President Trump’s first term. Judge Adalberto Jordan, an Obama nominee, dissented.

DHS lauded the ruling, calling it a “win for the American people, the rule of law and common sense.” “This lawsuit was never about the environmental impacts of turning a developed airport into a detention facility,” the department wrote in a post on X. “It has and will always be about open-borders activists and judges trying to keep law enforcement from removing dangerous criminal aliens from our communities, full stop.”

The Trump administration has presented Alligator Alcatraz as a cost-effective way of holding detainees and said it serves as a deterrent for illegal immigrants, while critics have claimed that its conditions are poor.

There has been a concerted effort from the political left to stop deportations of illegals by any means necessary. Conservatives are seeking to fight back against this.