Alligator Alcatraz: Florida's Less-than-Legal Internment Camp for Immigrants

An environmental perspective.

Without warning or public input, Florida’s Division of Emergency Management has erected an immigrant detention center deep within the Big Cypress National Preserve, part of the Everglades ecosystem. Detainees are already arriving. Despite the Division’s claim that the facility is part of a quiet agreement with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), no public documentation has confirmed any federal funding or official authorization. If this deal exists, it's buried in secrecy.

The site also happens to sit next to a small pilot training center with its own airfields—fields that, according to filings, are slated for use in off-the-books deportation flights. In other words, the state appears to be constructing a legal loophole for deporting migrants without federal oversight. And—not to wear my tinfoil hat here—but secret deportation flights out of quiet Florida airstrips feel eerily familiar. Think Guantanamo Bay, but this time with less public accountability and zero transparency about who’s being flown out or why. But I digress.

In recent days, civil summons have been issued to Todd Lyons, Kevin Guthrie, and Kristi Noem—initially on environmental grounds. Yet considering the speed at which the facility went up, and the fact that detainees are already being held there, the suits may have come too late to prevent the damage, both to people and to the land.

This filing was the Friends of the Everglades urgent attempt to stop construction of the facility—a facility they feared could become both an environmental and human rights catastrophe. Their first and clearest argument: under federal law (specifically NEPA), the government must conduct a full environmental impact study before beginning any major project that could significantly harm the environment. That never happened. The site sits in a fragile ecological zone that’s home to endangered species like panthers, bats, storks, and many more. These aren’t renewable resources. They don’t get to pack up and move. And yet DHS moved forward anyway—no EIS, no public review, no alternatives considered. These plaintiffs argued this was a direct violation of federal law. They were right. But the court declined to intervene. Construction continued. And now, detainees are inside—under unknown conditions—and the panthers and bats are more vulnerable than ever.

The plaintiffs also argued that the harm caused by this facility—to the land, the wildlife, and the surrounding community—far outweighs any inconvenience the government might face from a temporary pause. Let’s be real: DHS and the state of Florida bulldozed a wildlife preserve with no public notice, no environmental review, and no meaningful legal accountability. The plaintiffs weren’t asking the court to shut down all immigration enforcement—they were asking for a timeout to evaluate the damage and follow the law. But instead, the court deferred to the state’s vague assertions about national security, economic urgency, and “public good,” even though none of that was backed by public data, evidence, or oversight.

And what gets counted as “public interest”? In theory, protecting an endangered ecosystem and preventing human suffering is in the public’s interest. But in practice, when the government says something serves the public, it’s often accepted at face value—no matter the cost, no matter the secrecy. The court had a chance to preserve the status quo until basic legal questions could be resolved. Instead, it let the bulldozers keep running and the public is still in the dark, and its interest? That got buried in the swamp.

In their response, the defendants argued that the plaintiffs hadn’t met the legal burden to justify an emergency halt. They cited a familiar four-part test used in federal courts: (1) they say that the plaintiffs are not likely to win their case; (2) that the harm they will suffer will not be irreparable without immediate relief; (3) that the harm to government outweighs harm to the public; (4) and that granting relief would not serve the public interest. Because the government is the defendant here, they argue that the last two factors effectively merge—claiming that any interference with this facility is, by definition, contrary to national interest and security.

But here’s the thing: each of those four “requirements” is deeply subjective. There’s no clear standard for what counts as a “substantial likelihood” of success before a case is fully argued. The idea of “irreparable harm” depends entirely on a judge’s perception of what kind of damage matters—and to whom. And when the government is involved, it can wrap almost any project in the cloak of “public interest,” from national security to economic development. That gives courts wide discretion to side with the state even when legal violations are clear. In practice, this four-part test is less a hard legal bar and more a tool to justify decisions already made. And when the courts lean toward deferring to the state—especially in politically loaded cases like this one—that subjectivity becomes a convenient shield for government overreach.

Unfortunately, an environmentally seated argument is all that can be made with solid legal grounding right now as human rights suits are yet to come into play. But if you would like to see the court filings that are available, I encourage you to look throuh them yourself here.

Happy Independence Day - blow some stuff up with your kids and have fun.

-written by M. Shultz