Alligator Alcatraz is phasing out migrant detainees as lawsuits against the facility pile on and a federal judge repeatedly rules against the Trump administration.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams, appointed to the bench in Florida by the Obama administration, denied a request on Wednesday by the Trump administration and Florida officials to pause her previous order demanding operations at Alligator Alcatraz wind down, according to court documents. Federal officials have since confirmed that detainees at the Florida detention center are being transferred to other facilities.
“Defendants rehash the same general arguments about the importance of immigration enforcement they presented during the Preliminary Injunction Hearing,” Williams wrote in her eight-page order. “As Defendants provide no new evidence or argument about the particular dangerousness of the detainee population at [Alligator Alcatraz] or the need for a detention facility in this particular location, the Court will not repeat the shortcomings of Defendants’ claims here.”
Siding with environmentalists suing against the facility, Williams earlier in August ordered a temporary restraining order against any further construction of Alligator Alcatraz while debate over whether the facility violates environmental laws continued. The Obama-appointed judge ordered an indefinite halt on new construction on Aug. 21 and prohibited new detainees from being brought into the facility, according to court documents.
Florida officials appealed the order, but Williams on Wednesday declined to pause her ruling pending appeal. Referring to her as an “activist judge,” the Trump administration ripped Williams in a public statement.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, we are working at turbo speed on cost-effective and innovative ways to deliver on the American people’s mandate for mass deportations of criminal illegal aliens,” a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson stated to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“This activist judge’s order is yet another attempt to prevent the President from fulfilling the American people’s mandate to remove the worst of the worst — including gang members, murderers, pedophiles, terrorists, and rapists from our country,” the spokesperson continued. “Not to mention this ruling ignores the fact that this land has already been developed for a decade.”
DHS confirmed to the DCNF that it’s complying with Williams’ order and is moving detainees to other facilities. The spokesperson added that the administration will continue fighting “tooth-and-nail” to remove heinous criminal migrants from American communities.
“This activist judge doesn’t care about the invasion of our country facilitated by the Biden administration, but the American people do,” DHS said in a statement DCNF. “We have the law, the facts, and common sense on our side.”
First proposed by Florida officials in June and quickly supported by the Trump administration, the Alligator Alcatraz project turned a largely abandoned airfield in the middle of the Florida Everglades into a migrant detention center. The main facet of the jail is that detainees have virtually nowhere to escape, with the 1.5 million-acre region holding nothing but vast swamplands and more than 200,000 alligators.
The project, however, has since been subject to multiple lawsuits by environmentalists and others opposed to President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has doubled down on cooperation with federal immigration officials, having announced earlier in August plans for a second state-run migrant detention center dubbed “Deportation Depot.” DHS has also worked with state officials in Indiana and elsewhere to lock in other detention cooperative agreements, expanding the administration’s migrant detention space.
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