Florida Judge Kathleen Williams issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) to block the Trump administration from placing more detainees in Alligator Alcatraz. The order demands that the facility be shut down within 60 days.
The order, which centers on environmental issues, explains that plaintiffs argued that the “detention camp’s construction and operation risks harming the wetlands, wildlife, aquifer, and air and water quality in this sensitive area” and degrades the site’s natural integrity.
“The Court ENTERS a Preliminary Injunction prohibiting the State and Federal Defendants and their officers, agents, employees, attorneys, and any person who is in active concert or participation with them from (1) installing any additional industrial-style lighting (described by witnesses as ‘Sunbelt’ lighting); or doing any paving, filling, excavating, or fencing; or doing any other site expansion, including placing or erecting any additional buildings, tents, dormitories, or other residential or administrative facilities on the TNT [Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport] site; and (2) bringing any additional persons onto the TNT site who were not already being detained at the site at the time of this Order going into effect,” the order states.
It further states that the injunction “does not prohibit modification or repairs to existing facilities, which are solely for the purpose of increasing safety or mitigating environmental or other risks at the site.”
“No later than sixty (60) days from the date of this order, and once the population attrition allows for safe implementation of this Order, the Defendants shall remove 1) the temporary fencing installed by Defendants to allow Tribe members access to the site consistent with the access they enjoyed before the erection of the detention camp; 2) the Sunbelt lighting fixtures and any additional lighting installed for the use of the property as a detention facility; and 3) all generators, gas, sewage, and other waste and waste receptacles that were installed to support this project,” the judge added.
Alligator Alcatraz has been condemned by members of the Miccosukee tribe and other indigenous groups. “Rather than Miccosukee homelands being an uninhabited wasteland for alligators and pythons, as some have suggested, the Big Cypress is the Tribe’s traditional homelands,” said Miccosukee Chairman Talbert Cypress in a June statement.
