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The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals determined that the immigration detention center known as Alligator Alcatraz, located in the Florida Everglades, will remain open, reaffirming its previous decision to block an order from a federal judge that called for the dismantling of the facility for failing to comply with federal environmental legislation.
The three-judge panel, with a majority vote of two to one, held that the facility, managed by Florida, was not under federal control and did not need to comply with the law requiring an environmental impact review.
"Florida officials, not federal ones, were the ones who built the facility," the court argued on Tuesday, rejecting the application of federal environmental review regulations.
"They control the land and built the facility 'entirely' with state resources," added the report.
The only judge who voted against it, Nancy Abudu, wrote that immigration is a federal responsibility, and that just because Florida built an immigration detention center, it does not allow the federal government to relinquish its authority.
"The facility could not have been built or used as an immigration detention center without the request of the federal defendants. The evidence of federal control may be more apparent when we acknowledge that immigration remains a realm exclusively under the authority of the federal government," he emphasized.
Federal Judge Kathleen Williams issued a decisive order in August: ordered the closure and dismantling of the center, arguing that its construction violated the National Environmental Policy Act as an environmental impact assessment had not been conducted beforehand. However, the appeals court suspended this order just a few days later, pending a hearing that took place this month in Miami.
After this week's announcement of the Appeals Court's decision, two of the environmental groups that filed the lawsuit, Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity, announced that they will continue fighting when the case returns to district court.
"This struggle is far from over. The alligator prison was hastily constructed in one of the country's most fragile ecosystems without the slightest environmental assessment, incurring immense human and ecological costs," stated a NBC Miami Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades.
The center, inaugurated in the summer of 2025, was funded with contracts worth over 245 million dollars to build the facility, awarded to allies of Governor Ron DeSantis.
Since its opening, the center has been the subject of multiple complaints from human rights organizations. Amnesty International has denounced torture and cruel treatment of migrants detained at the facility, highlighting conditions that it characterized as inhumane.
The reports also included incidents of physical violence: according to testimonies collected by media and organizations, guards violently beat and sprayed pepper spray on detainees, in incidents that sparked a new wave of criticism against the operations of the facility.
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