Court Sides With Administration on Florida's 'Alligator Alcatraz'

A controversial immigration lockup in the middle of the Everglades just cleared a big legal hurdle, the Hill reports. A divided federal appeals court on Tuesday scrapped a lower court order that would have forced officials to dismantle Florida's "Alligator Alcatraz" detention center, siding with the Trump administration's position that the project didn't trigger a federal environmental review. In a 2-1 ruling, the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals said there wasn't enough federal involvement in the facility's construction to invoke the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires environmental studies for major federal actions.

The state-built facility, at the remote Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, opened last year to house migrants and has been promoted by federal officials as a template for other sites. Environmental groups Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity, along with the Miccosukee Tribe, sued, arguing that putting a large detention center in the Everglades demanded a NEPA review. A federal district judge agreed in August, freezing transfers of new detainees and ordering fences, lights, generators, and other infrastructure removed within 60 days.

The appeals court had already paused that order while it weighed the case and on Tuesday wiped it away. Writing for the majority, Circuit Judge William Pryor said federal agencies never made a construction decision that would trigger NEPA and that continuing operational support from Homeland Security and ICE didn't change that. The panel also found that parts of the district judge's directive would collide with a separate law that narrowly limits court interference in immigration enforcement. "Florida, not federal, officials constructed the facility. They control the land and 'entirely' built the facility at state expense," the majority wrote, per Fox News. The case was remanded back to the district court, Politico reports, and the executive director of Friends of the Everglades vowed that the "fight isn't over."