Deep in the Everglades, in a patch of swamp surrounded by snakes, alligators and relentless mosquitoes, Florida has opened a makeshift detention center that critics say is unlike anything the country has seen before. Detainees there are being held out of view of the federal system, cut off from lawyers and families, and in conditions that advocates describe as both unlawful and dangerous.
“This facility has already become a disaster in the first few weeks of its operations, with mounting reports of disease, wrongful removals and people being denied all kinds of basic rights,” said Spencer Amdur, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project.
The site, hastily built on land prone to flooding, has been nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz.” Immigrants’ rights groups — including the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Florida, the Community Justice Project and the National Immigrant Justice Center — filed a federal lawsuit Friday, arguing that the state has no authority to run what amounts to its own immigration jail.
Amy Godshall, a legal fellow with the ACLU of Florida, argued that Florida has poured “hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars” into the project only to strip detainees of fundamental rights. “Not only have the conditions been abhorrent, but the detention itself is unlawful,” she said. “Families cannot even find out where their loved ones are.”
At the center of the lawsuit is Florida’s reliance on what are known as 287(g) agreements. The program, created by Congress, allows state and local law enforcement agencies to partner with federal immigration authorities. Under these agreements, local officers can perform certain immigration enforcement tasks — but only in very limited circumstances and always under close supervision from federal officials.
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In practice, that usually means checking the immigration status of people who are already in local custody for other reasons, such as after an arrest. It does not give states the power to build or operate their own detention centers, nor does it allow them to hand off immigration duties to private contractors.
“People are being held without charge, cut off from their attorneys and made invisible in the immigration system,” said Godshall.
The lawsuit also alleges that officers working at the detention center lack proper training, sometimes receiving only a few hours of online instruction compared with the weeks of in-person preparation required of federal agents. That gap, advocates argue, has compounded mistakes and worsened the risks for those inside.
Mark Fleming, associate director of litigation at the National Immigrant Justice Center, called the detention site “truly unprecedented,” pointing to what he described as a dangerous lack of oversight. “The lack of accountability and resulting deprivation at this remote and inhumane detention camp in the Florida Everglades is exactly why Congress has made it unlawful,” he said.
A court ruling this week temporarily halted further transfers of detainees to the Everglades site, but those already inside remain there, according to the groups behind the lawsuit. For now, the future of ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ will be decided in federal court.
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