By Dietrich Knauth
NEW YORK (Reuters) -A federal appeals court on Thursday allowed construction to resume at the federal migrant detention center known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” blocking a lower court order that had ordered a halt to the project.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a split opinion that President Donald Trump’s administration is likely to prevail in a legal battle with environmental groups who say the facility is endangering the Everglades and its wildlife. Two judges sided with the Trump administration, and one judge dissented.
The majority ruled that the project – which has been funded by the state of Florida – did not trigger the kind of environmental review needed for federally funded construction projects.
Although both Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have said the federal government will pay for expanding the detention facility, there is no evidence that federal funds have been used for construction, the court ruled.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security called the ruling a “huge victory” in a social media post.
“This lawsuit was never about the environmental impacts of turning a developed airport into a detention facility,” DHS 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.”
The facility is located 37 miles (60 km) west of Miami in a vast subtropical wetland that is home to alligators, crocodiles, and pythons – imagery that the White House leveraged to show its determination to remove migrants it says were wrongly allowed to stay in the U.S. under former President Joe Biden.
The detention center cost about $250 million to build, and covers over 18 acres (seven hectares) at a site that was formerly used as a “small but bustling working airport” in Miami-Dade County and Collier County, according to court documents. The reconstructed site could house thousands of detainees, and has been used to detain 900 migrants so far, according to the environmental groups’ lawsuit.
Two environmental groups filed a legal motion in June seeking to block further construction at the detention site, saying it violated federal, state, and local environmental laws.
Trump, who has toured the site, has dismissed the environmental concerns, saying the detention facility was a template for what he would like to do nationwide.
The Republican president, who has a home in Florida, has for a decade made aggressive immigration and border policies central to his political agenda.
(Reporting by Dietrich Knauth in New York and Kanishka Singh in WashingtonEditing by Rod Nickel)
