ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) – Lawyers seeking a temporary restraining order against an immigration detention center in Florida’s Everglades say that detainees at the “Alligator Alcatraz” (“Alligator Alcatraz”) have been barred from meeting with lawyers, are being held without charges, and that a federal immigration court has canceled bond hearings.
On Monday, a virtual hearing was underway in a Miami federal court regarding a lawsuit filed on July 16. On Friday, a new motion was filed in the case.
Lawyers who have appeared for bond hearings of detainees at the “Alligator Alcatraz” have been informed that the immigration court has no jurisdiction over their clients, the lawyers wrote in court filings. Immigration attorneys demanded that federal and state officials identify an immigration court that has jurisdiction over the detainees and begin accepting bond petitions, arguing that the detainees’ constitutional due process rights are being violated.
“This is an unprecedented situation where hundreds of detainees are cut off from communication, unable to access the courts, under a legal authority that has never been explained and that may not exist,” the immigration lawyers wrote. “This is an unprecedented and troubling situation.”
The lawsuit is the second against this migrant detention center in Florida. Environmental groups sued federal and state officials last month, asking that the project built on a landing strip in the heart of the Everglades be halted because the process did not follow state and federal environmental laws.
Critics have said the facility poses a cruel and inhumane threat to ecologically sensitive wetlands, while Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and other Republican state officials have defended it as part of the state’s aggressive push to back President Donald Trump’s actions against illegal immigration.
The Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, has praised Florida for putting forward the idea, as her agency seeks to significantly expand its capacity to detain migrants.
