Attorneys: 'Alligator Alcatraz' detainees held without charges, barred
from legal access
[July 29, 2025]
By MIKE SCHNEIDER
Civil rights lawyers seeking a temporary restraining order against an
immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades say that
“Alligator Alcatraz” detainees have been barred from meeting attorneys,
are being held without any charges and that a federal immigration court
has canceled bond hearings.
The immigration attorneys argued Monday during a virtual hearing that
the detainees' constitutional rights were being violated and that 100
detainees already had been deported from “Alligator Alcatraz.”
Lawyers who have shown up for bond hearings for “Alligator Alcatraz”
detainees have been told that the immigration court doesn't have
jurisdiction over their clients, and the civil rights attorneys demanded
that federal and state officials identify an immigration court that has
jurisdiction over the detainees so it can start accepting petitions for
bond.
“This is an emergency situation,” Eunice Cho, an attorney for the
American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, said during the hearing in
federal court in Miami. “Officers at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ are going
around trying to force people to sign deportation orders without the
ability to speak to counsel.”
But Nicholas Meros, an attorney representing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis,
said the situation had evolved since the civil rights groups' lawsuit
was filed July 16. Videoconference rooms had been set up so detainees
can talk to attorneys, and in-person meetings between detainees and
attorneys had started.
“There have been a number of facts that have changed,” Meros said during
Monday's hearing.
U.S. District Judge Rodolfo Ruiz, an appointee of President Donald
Trump, didn't make an immediate ruling. He asked the civil rights
attorneys to refile their complaint to consolidate their pleadings as a
request for a preliminary injunction, and he set a briefing schedule
that will end with an in-person court hearing on Aug. 18.
The judge warned that his role was to provide relief to any proven
constitutional violations and said that “attempts to transform the court
into the warden of ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ is not going to happen here.”
The judge also allowed the civil rights groups to argue for the release
of any agreements between the federal and state governments showing who
has authority over the detention center, a murky issue since it opened a
month ago.
Knowing more about any agreements “would be good for all sides since the
court may be walking into a bit of a black hole about the interplay
between the federal and state authorities and certainly jurisdictional
concerns,” Ruiz said. “And that's part of the problem — who is doing
what in this facility?”
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The lawsuit is the second one challenging “Alligator Alcatraz.”
Environmental groups last month sued federal and state officials
asking that the project built on an airstrip in the heart of the
Florida Everglades be halted because the process didn’t follow state
and federal environmental laws.
Attorneys for the state of Florida and federal government have
argued in both cases that the federal court's southern district in
Florida was the wrong venue since the airstrip is located in
neighboring Collier County, which is a part of the middle district,
even though the property is owned by Miami-Dade County. They also
argued that decision-making took place in Tallahassee, which is in
the northern district. A hearing over whether the southern district
venue is proper in the environmental case is set for Wednesday.
“All the activities that plaintiffs allege harm their interests —
construction, paving, detention — occurred in the Middle District,
not in the Southern District. And all the relevant decision-making
occurred in either the Middle District or the Northern District of
Florida,” U.S. Department of Justice attorneys said Friday in a
court filing for the environmental lawsuit.
Critics have condemned the facility as a cruel and inhumane threat
to detainees, while DeSantis and other Republican state officials
have defended it as part of the state’s aggressive push to support
President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has praised Florida for
coming forward with the idea, as the department looks to
significantly expand its immigration detention capacity.
At a news conference in Panama City Beach on Monday, DeSantis said
he hoped the pace of deportations picked up at the facility.
“The reality is, if you don’t support sending somebody back to their
own country who came in illegally and has already been ordered that
they’re violating the law and ordered to be removed, if you don’t
support that, then you are for an open border,” DeSantis said. “I
reject that. That is not how a country can operate.”
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