Appellate Panel Weighs Closing Everglades' 'Alligator Alcatraz' Detention Center

Deep in the Florida Everglades, a detention facility built by the state to hold immigration detainees remains open and operating — even as a legal battle over whether it ever should have opened played out Tuesday before a federal appellate court panel in Miami.

Environmental groups asked the three-judge panel to lift its own temporary halt and reinstate a lower court order that would have wound down the facility, commonly called "Alligator Alcatraz," by October. The appellate court froze that closure order in early September after Florida and the Trump administration argued the state had not yet applied for federal reimbursement — and therefore was not obligated to comply with federal environmental review requirements.

The facility's continued operation carries direct stakes for Treasure Coast residents who depend on the Everglades watershed for water supply and the ecological health of the lagoon system. Environmental groups, including the Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity, contend the detention center was built without the environmental impact review required under federal law.

The argument before the panel turned on a narrow but consequential legal question: what triggers federal environmental law? Jesse Panuccio, an attorney for the Florida Department of Emergency Management, told the judges two conditions must both be present — federal funding and federal control — and that federal agencies had no operational control over the state-run facility.

"You need both," Panuccio told the panel. "Even with funding, I don't think that would follow because they don't have federal control."

Attorney Paul Schwiep, representing the environmental groups, pushed back sharply, arguing that immigration enforcement is a constitutional federal function — making federal law applicable regardless of who built the facility.

"The state has no role," Schwiep said.

That argument carries additional weight in light of federal records showing FEMA approved $608 million in funding for the center's construction and operation in late September, according to public documents.

The federal district judge in Miami had ordered the facility to close in mid-August, finding that a reimbursement decision had already been effectively made. The appellate court halted that order pending appeal. A separate federal judge in Fort Myers has already ruled that detainees at the facility must have access to unmonitored, unrecorded legal calls with their attorneys.

The appellate panel did not indicate when it would rule.

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