Judge who ordered Alligator Alcatraz shut down overstepped, appeals court rules
A federal appeals court on Tuesday overturned a Miami judge’s order that briefly required the Florida Division of Emergency Management to begin shutting down Alligator Alcatraz last summer and barred new detainees from being held at the site.
The split decision by the three-judge panel of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals said District Judge Kathleen Williams’ Aug. 21 order — paused by the same appeals court just days after it was issued — was improper because the environmental groups and Miccosukee Tribe bringing the lawsuit “failed to prove” that the federal government controlled the site.
Part of their decision hinged on the fact that Florida has not been reimbursed a dime for the more $600 million in taxpayer funds the state has spent on constructing and maintaining the site, despite Gov. Ron DeSantis’ promises last summer that it would be funded by the federal government.
The appellate judges pointed to the Trump administration’s lack of financial investment as evidence that the project shouldn’t trigger federal environmental review laws.
“Until Homeland Security officials decide to fund the facility, no final agency action occurs,” the judges wrote.
Williams in her order had cited that the project was requested by the federal government with the promise of federal funding to reimburse the state for expenses at the site, and it had failed to abide by federal environmental regulations.
Lawyers for the state and federal government had argued that the facility was a state-run and operated site and that the federal government’s role was limited to oversight of the detainees being held there. The government lawyers characterized William’s order as an overreach that subjected the state to federal law.
The state lawyers also said the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, where the detention center is built, is subject to state rules and that the state can decide whatever it needs to do with it.
Chief appellate Judge William Pryor and Judge Andrew Basher — appointed by George W. Bush and Donald Trump, respectively — agreed with the state. They said the environmental groups and the tribe needed to show both federal control and federal funding to trigger federal environmental laws.
“The environmentalists and Tribe must prove both that the facility was federally funded and that it was subject to federal control. But they failed to do so because the facility is not federally controlled,” the ruling stated.
The judges also said the district court’s ruling violated a 1996 federal law that hardened immigration enforcement and restricted judicial power on immigration. They stated that part of William’s order had barred the federal government from adding new detainees to the Everglades facility, restricting the Secretary of Homeland Security from carrying out the duties of immigration enforcement.
A third judge on the panel, however, dissented. Judge Nancy Abudu — appointed by Joe Biden — said the state and federal government failed to show that the district court abused its power.
She said the site is clearly under federal control, because that’s the only way the state has any authority to enforce immigration laws.
“If not for its partnership with DHS and ICE, Florida’s housing of these individuals (and in some cases families) would be more akin to kidnapping and, at its most extreme, perhaps human trafficking,” she wrote. “The state cannot detain a non-citizen without the proper authority to do so.”
Tuesday’s appeals court ruling sets a dangerous precedent for the future of immigration enforcement, Abudu said. “Permitting DHS and ICE to abdicate their responsibility will have dangerous, and sometimes deadly, consequences for detainees who are being abused by officers who, with no state authority or federal supervision, engage in rogue behavior,” she said.
Tuesday’s ruling has no practical effect on the day-to-day operations of Alligator Alcatraz, given that Williams’ order has been paused since September, when the same appeals court allowed the state and federal governments to continue to use the Everglades detention camp for immigrants while judges hashed out the arguments of the lawsuit.
The ruling vacating Williams’ ruling and remanding the case back to her court means operations at the controversial facility will continue while the lower court litigates whether the state and federal government should be subjected to federal environmental regulations at the site.
The decision was a loss for environmental groups that had argued that the facility is causing irreparable harm to the surrounding Everglades wetland habitats.
Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades, one of the environmental groups in the lawsuit, said Tuesday that “the fight is far from over.”
“Alligator Alcatraz was hastily erected in one of the most fragile ecosystems in the country without the most basic environmental review, at immense human and ecological cost,” Samples said. “We are pursuing every legal avenue available to right this wrong. Alligator Alcatraz will go down in history as a boondoggle to taxpayers and a flagrant assault on the Everglades, and we look forward to returning to the District Court to advance our case to shut it down.”
In another lawsuit against the state Division of Emergency Management and the federal government, detainees at the facility say their First Amendment rights were being violated. In March, a court ordered the state and federal governments to provide detainees with unscheduled access to their lawyers and to increase the number of phones at the site.
The state filed an appeal with the Eleventh Circuit Court in early April in an attempt to reverse the order.
This story was originally published April 21, 2026 at 5:12 PM with the headline "Judge who ordered Alligator Alcatraz shut down overstepped, appeals court rules."
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