COLLIER COUNTY, Fla. — While the operation of the “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration detention center in the Everglades appears to be over, a judge will soon decide whether the detainees who were kept there were unlawfully kept from their attorneys.
It is one of several legal fights that remain, as the state, the federal government and environmental groups wait to see where the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals will land on a ruling that ordered the closure of the state-run immigration detention facility in the Everglades by mid-October.
The judge found that the government violated the National Environmental Policy Act.
“We know this battle is not over,” Eve Samples, the executive director of Friends of the Everglades, said. “There will be a next stage in the appeals court.”
A separate legal challenge filed in federal court pertaining to the legal rights of detainees gets back underway Thursday with a status hearing.
“We’re far from done. We’re far from having the answers and accountability for this detention center,” Katie Blankenship, founding partner of Sanctuary of the South and one of the case plaintiffs, said.
The plaintiffs claim the government violated the First Amendment rights of detainees by denying them timely and confidential access to attorneys at the facility, built on the Miami-Dade-owned Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport in Collier County.
“What we hope is that this case does give them pause before taking such egregious actions and absolutely confirms a precedent for the importance of First Amendment rights for immigrants in ICE detention,” Blankenship said.
Legal analyst David Weinstein, who isn’t involved in the case, weighed in.
“Their argument is going to apply not only to this particular facility but to any facility, whether it is temporary or otherwise,” Weinstein said. “Are they getting access to their clients? Are they getting access to their clients in a place where they can engage in privileged conversations with them? How quickly can they get to them? Are there incidents where they are being denied access and by the time they get access their clients are gone?”
In yet another case, immigrant rights advocates are challenging Florida’s legal authority to operate a state-run immigration jail.
The suit comes at a time when other states are beginning to follow Florida’s model, from the proposed “Cornhusker Clink” in Nebraska to the “Speedway Slammer” in Indiana.
“Other states and other facilities are taking a close look at this lawsuit again because of the legal issues for what this boils down to,” Weinstein said. “If this issue comes up again, they want clear law. If it’s a state facility, the environmental impact study required by a federal statute doesn’t apply if it’s a state facility, but if run at the direction of federal entities, then the statute would apply, and you need to do an environmental impact statement.
“The Everglades are not the only place in the world where operation of a detention facility is going to have an impact. And it doesn’t even have to be a detention facility. It could be a widget factory, it could be a bread factory, anything that’s going to have an impact on the environment. If it’s run and operated by the feds, you need to have an environmental impact study.”
Weinstein said states will also look at their own laws that may require studies.
Blankenship concludes, “We are in a place of complete lawlessness with our own executive branch and the Department of Homeland Security.”
“It shouldn’t take a federal court to come in and shut this down,” she said. “It is unlawful and in about as many ways as you can look at it, from the agreements that supposedly founded the state’s ability to open it to how they’re running it.”
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