Appeals court rules 'Alligator Alcatraz' can stay open, rejecting push for federal environmental impact review

"Alligator Alcatraz," an immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades, can remain open, an appeals court ruled on Tuesday, upholding its earlier decision to block a judge's order for the facility to wind down operations for failing to comply with federal environmental law.

In a 2-1 decision, the majority on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals found the state-run facility was not under federal control and was not subject to federal law requiring an environmental impact review.

"Florida, not federal, officials constructed the facility," the majority wrote. "They control the land and 'entirely' built the facility at state expense."

The legal dispute centers in part on the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a federal law that requires agencies to assess environmental impacts before major actions.

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The court wrote that Florida had received no federal reimbursement when U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams’ preliminary injunction ordering a gradual winding down of operations was issued last year. Williams had found that a federal reimbursement plan had effectively already been made.

The appeals court paused Williams' order just days after it was handed down in August, pending a hearing, which was held earlier this month.

In a dissent to the appeals court's latest ruling, Judge Nancy Abudu wrote that immigration is a federal responsibility and that the federal government cannot relinquish its authority just because Florida officials built an immigration detention center.

"The facility would not, and could not, have been built and used as an immigration detention center without the federal defendants’ request," Abudu said. "The evidence of federal control perhaps is most apparent when we acknowledge that immigration remains uniquely and exclusively within the federal government’s domain."

Two of the environmental groups that brought the lawsuit — Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity — said they would continue pursuing the case as it returns to Williams for further litigation.

"This fight is far from over," Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades, said in a statement. "Alligator Alcatraz was hastily erected in one of the most fragile ecosystems in the country without the most basic environmental review at immense human and ecological cost."

The facility is located at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport site, an area surrounded by protected wetlands within the Everglades ecosystem, according to court filings.

Officials in the Sunshine State also built a second immigration detention center in northern Florida.

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Earlier this month, a lawyer for two migrants detained at "Alligator Alcatraz" said in a court declaration that guards severely beat and pepper-sprayed detainees, causing injuries to their heads, shoulders and wrists.

"The officers beat several people during this incident and broke another detained individual’s wrist," lawyer Katherine Blankenship wrote.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.