Opinion: What Florida Is Doing at Alligator Alcatraz Is Illegal — Full Stop

What the state of Florida is doing in the so-called Alligator Alcatraz detention camp is illegal, period.

On Monday, a federal judge requested that state and federal governments produce legal agreements granting them the authority to detain immigrants in the Everglades and gave them until this Thursday to do so.

U.S. District Judge Rodolfo Ruiz, appointed by President Donald Trump in 2018, issued the order as part of an ongoing civil rights lawsuit. The case, brought by civil rights groups, alleges that detainees at "Alligator Alcatraz" are having their constitutional rights violated because they are being denied access to legal counsel, held without formal charges, and stripped of bond hearings following the cancellation of immigration court proceedings.

The agreements would clarify who has legal custody over the estimated one thousand detainees at Alligator Alcatraz. It's an important question because so far, the immigrants detained there have been denied any semblance of a legal process. Usually, when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) issues an immigration detainer — which allows local law enforcement to hold someone up to 48 hours past their release for possible deportation — a specific action, like a custody transfer or case review, must occur within 14 days of the detainer’s issuance.

We know of detainees who have been held at Alligator Alcatraz for nearly a month now without having the opportunity to not only meet with their lawyers, but also with an immigration officer or judge. Detainees say their arrival dates are being falsified, reportedly altered when their wristbands are scanned, to hide the fact they've been held longer than the 14-day legal limit.

Detainees at the Everglades Immigrant Detention Camp are telling us that their arrival dates are being adjusted since many have already been there for more than 14 days. Apparently, when their wrist bands are scanned, arrival dates have been adjusted.

— Rep. Anna V. Eskamani, PhD 🔨 (@AnnaForFlorida) July 31, 2025

U.S. Rep. Anna Eskamani says that when the wife of an Alligator Alcatraz detainee emailed Miami’s Krome Detention Center to ask if it had jurisdiction over the facility, officials referred her to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). When she contacted DHS officials, they referred her to the Florida Department of Emergency Management (FDEM), the agency responsible for overseeing the Everglades detention camp.

Why two federal judges have asked state & federal governments to show the legal agreement which gives the authority to detain immigrants in the Everglades: “Alligator Alcatraz” has no due process, when asked who has jurisdiction over immigration court cases, no one seems to know. pic.twitter.com/zQx68E2w1M

— Thomas Kennedy (@tomaskenn) July 30, 2025

Without the aforementioned legal agreements, FDEM and other state entities simply do not have the legal authority to detain immigrants or jurisdiction over their cases. The immigrants in detention are left in legal limbo, with their constitutional rights violated since they are barred from meeting with their lawyers, held without any charges, and unable to move forward with bond hearings.

I discussed this dilemma during a CNN interview on Tuesday. "There was a hearing last Monday, a federal court hearing in Miami, where the lawyers, their argument was that they don't even know who has jurisdiction over the site. They don't know which immigration court, which jurisdiction to present their case [to]," I told CNN anchor John Berman.

There’s also the questionable legal authority Gov. Ron DeSantis used to seize the property where Alligator Alcatraz is located. Formerly known as the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, this land, located in the vulnerable Big Cypress National Preserve, was appraised at $190 million.

DeSantis weaponized an emergency order issued in January of 2023, which cited a border crisis as its rationale. Florida does not have a terrestrial border, and at no time was it under stress from a migration influx; in fact, the Florida Office of Economic and Demographic Research cited net migration into the state as a way to alleviate the slowdown of population growth.

"Going forward, [net migration] will produce all of Florida’s population growth, as natural increase is anticipated to remain negative with deaths outnumbering births," the organization wrote in an August 2024 report.

The emergency order also cites former President Joe Biden, who is no longer in office, numerous times. Besides, border crossings were at a historically low number in June.

Despite all this, DeSantis has recently extended the now two-and-a-half-year-old emergency order. It is clear that he is weaponizing it to seize this land, avoid permitting requirements, and circumvent competitive bidding processes. Over $245 million of our public tax dollars have been disbursed to politically connected contractors operating at Alligator Alcatraz.

In a widely reported instance of this apparent political quid pro quo, a Texas-based company donated $10,000 to the Republican Party of Florida before receiving more than $1 million in state contracts to operate at the detention camp. Another politically connected but little-known company from Jacksonville scored a whopping $78 million contract.

The lawlessness and, quite frankly, grift we are witnessing in Florida is jaw-dropping. The sheer depravity of it all, with the Republican Party of Florida selling Alligator Alcatraz hats and beer koozies on its website, is hard to fathom. The stories of horrid conditions inside the detention camp are shocking, with those detained having to scoop fecal matter from toilets with their bare hands because insufficient water leads to a lack of pressure for flushing.

This place needs to be shut down. It’s a moral stain and an international embarrassment to our state.

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