Federal and state officials withheld evidence that the Department of Homeland Security had agreed to reimburse Florida for some of the costs of constructing an immigration detention centre in the Florida Everglades known as “Alligator Alcatraz”, according to environmental groups suing to shut down the facility.
The Everglades facility remains open, still holding detainees, because an appellate court in early September relied on arguments by Florida and the Trump administration that the state hadn't yet applied for federal reimbursement, and therefore wasn't required to follow federal environmental law. The new evidence — emails and documents obtained through a public records request — shows that officials had discussed federal reimbursement in June, and that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) confirmed in early August that it had received a grant application from state officials. Florida was notified in late September that FEMA had approved $608 million in federal funding to support the centre's construction and operation.
“We now know that the federal and state government had records confirming that they closely partnered on this facility from the beginning but failed to disclose them to the district court,” said Tania Galloni, one of the attorneys for the environmental groups Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity.
An appellate panel in Atlanta put a temporary hold on a lower court judge's ruling that would have closed the state-built facility. The new evidence should now be considered as the judges decide the facility's permanent fate, the groups said in court papers on Wednesday. A federal judge in Miami in mid-August ordered the facility to wind down operations over two months because officials had failed to conduct an environmental impact review as required by federal law.
The Florida Department of Emergency Management, which led the efforts to build the Everglades facility, did not respond to an emailed inquiry. Florida has led other states in constructing facilities to support President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. Besides the Everglades facility, which received its first detainees in July, Florida has opened an immigration detention centre in northeast Florida and is looking at opening a third facility in the Florida Panhandle. The environmental lawsuit is one of three federal court challenges to the Everglades facility; in the others, detainees argue that Florida agencies and private contractors have no authority to operate the centre under federal law.
