Friends of the Everglades in Stuart and the Center for Biological Diversity filed a federal lawsuit to protect the Florida Everglades from a plan for a massive detention center to confine people who are detained in immigration raids.
The suit was filed in U.S. District Court against the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Florida Division of Emergency Management, and Miami-Dade County. The aim is to block a detention center dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” according to a June 27 news release from Earthjustice.
The prison is being proposed for a former jetport site in Big Cypress National Preserve. The plan has gone through no environmental review as required under federal law, and the public has had no opportunity to comment, the lawsuit states.
“Despite that, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has plowed ahead with developing the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, roughly two hours west of Miami, and one hour east of Naples, in hopes of detaining up to 5,000 people there,” the news release states.
“The site is more than 96% wetlands, surrounded by Big Cypress National Preserve, and is habitat for the endangered Florida panther and other iconic species. This scheme is not only cruel, it threatens the Everglades ecosystem that state and federal taxpayers have spent billions to protect,” Friends of the Everglades Executive Director Eve Samples said in a news release. “Friends of the Everglades was founded by Marjory Stoneman Douglas in 1969 to stop harmful development at this very location. Fifty-six years later, the threat has returned — and it poses another existential threat to the Everglades.”
The massive detention center will blight one of the “most iconic ecosystems in the world,” said Elise Bennett, Florida and Caribbean director and attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity.
“This reckless attack on the Everglades — the lifeblood of Florida — risks polluting sensitive waters and turning more endangered Florida panthers into roadkill. It makes no sense to build what’s essentially a new development in the Everglades for any reason, but this reason is particularly despicable,” Bennett stated.
The Everglades is the largest mangrove ecosystem in the Western Hemisphere, the largest continuous stand of sawgrass prairie and the most significant breeding ground for wading birds in North America. In 2010, it was designated as an endangered UNESCO World Heritage site, according to the press release.
“This plan has had none of the environmental review that’s required by federal law,” said Tania Galloni, managing attorney for the Florida office of Earthjustice. “Cruelty aside, it defies common sense to put a mass of people, vehicles, and development in one of the most significant wetlands in the world. That’s why we’re going to court.”
Friends of the Everglades is represented by Earthjustice and attorneys Scott Hiaasen and Paul Schwiep.
The detention center was proposed by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier and dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” the prison, Uthmeier said. He said the facility would be built in the middle of nowhere.
The Everglades is not just a useless stretch of sawgrass and tree islands, and the facility would be better placed somewhere else, critics say. Some members of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida oppose the idea as well.
“It’s right next to a lot of old people and families and they say it’s minimum destructions but it’s still not helping when we’re talking about the health of the Everglades,” Mad Bear Osceola, who grew up in a village that’s adjacent to the jetport property, told the Fort Myers News-Press. “You have to consider the safety implications. The camps near there are full of women, and you have to think about our village right next door.”
Tim O’Hara is TCPalm’s environment reporter. Contact him at tim.ohara@tcpalm.com.
This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Alligator Alcatraz: Friends of the Everglades files lawsuit to block immigration prison
Reporting by Timothy O’Hara and Chad Gillis, Treasure Coast Newspapers / Treasure Coast Newspapers
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