Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) announced that Alligator Alcatraz’s operations can continue under a new court ruling blocking an order that called for further construction on the facility to cease.
“The mission continues on immigration enforcement. The media was giddy that somehow Alligator Alcatraz was ‘shutting down.’ Now we told them that that wasn’t true, there had been illegal aliens continuing to be there and removed and returned to their home country,” DeSantis said. “But they ran with the narrative because some leftist judge ruled implausibly that somehow Florida wasn’t allowed to use our own property to help the federal government in this important mission because they didn’t do an environmental impact statement. Well, we said we would fight that, and we said the mission would continue, and I’m pleased to say that the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has just stayed that ruling and stayed the case. So Alligator Alcatraz is, in fact, like we always said, open for business.”
Judge Barbara Lagoa and Judge Elizabeth Branch wrote in the 2-1 ruling that the district court “erred in finding that the defense of improper venue was waived by the Defendants’ failure to argue it in their initial responses to the motion for a temporary restraining order.”
“The Federal Defendants have established that the district court’s injunction will inevitably compromise DHS’s ability to keep criminal aliens detained, protect the law-abiding public, enforce immigration laws, and maintain border security. We think that is enough to show irreparable harm,” the judges found.
The Department of Homeland Security celebrated the ruling, saying the decision is a “win for the American people, the rule of law and common sense.”
“This lawsuit was never about the environmental impacts of turning a developed airport into a detention facility,” the department said. “It has and will always be about open-borders activists and judges trying to keep law enforcement from removing dangerous criminal aliens from our communities, full stop.”
