Efe Özkan
22 August 2025•Update: 22 August 2025
ISTANBUL
A US federal judge has ordered that “Alligator Alcatraz,” the controversial immigration detention facility in Florida’s Everglades, no longer take in additional people and also that it remove additional infrastructure added to the remote site.
Kathleen Williams issued the Thursday preliminary injunction after a federal lawsuit was filed by environmental groups and a Native American tribe who are concerned with the impact the facility will have on the environmentally sensitive area, according to CNN.
In addition to barring extra detainees from being moved to the facility, the order mandates that lighting, fencing and “all generators, gas, sewage, and other waste and waste receptacles that were installed to support this project” must be removed within 60 days.
In her order, Williams wrote “the Court is relying on programmatic attrition of the camp’s population within the next sixty days,” conceding the order effectively shuts the site down.
Elise Pautler Bennet, an attorney with one of the environmental groups that brought the lawsuit, praised Williams’ ruling, saying in a statement: “We are so relieved. We feel we presented voluminous evidence that is presented in her order showing this was the right decision to protect the environment and the interest of Americans in the Everglades.”
The facility is surrounded by Everglades National Park, Big Cypress National Preserve, and the tribal lands of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, a plaintiff in the case.
The state of Florida – run by a governor from President Donald Trump’s Republican Party – which has been helping the Trump administration build the site, has already appealed the judge’s ruling.
Besides environmental concerns, the facility is controversial for housing people targeted for deportation under the Trump administration’s crackdown on non-US citizens suspected of being in the country illegally or of having committed offenses that call for their expulsion.
Critics of the crackdown say immigration agents wear masks and refuse to identify themselves or their government affiliation. They say the agents are actively detaining people who are in the country legally or have been in the US for decades, rather than the criminals, gang members, and terrorists Trump had promised to deport.
Further, they say people who support causes such as Palestinian statehood are being deported for political reasons, and taken to remote locations like “Alligator Alcatraz” to deny them access to community support or legal assistance.
