Below is a deep dive on our recent win against the I.C.E. Everglades Detention Center from Sam Sankar, Earthjustice's Senior Vice President of Programs.

Friends,

Two months ago, the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport was a single-runway training facility surrounded by Florida’s Big Cypress National Preserve, an internationally recognized dark sky park and home to the endangered Florida panther and Florida bonneted bats.  

Then the federal government partnered with the Florida Division of Emergency Management to transform the site into a mass detention center, and the trucks — not to mention the pavers, excavators, fillers, fencers, backhoes, tents, and massive industrial lights — rolled in. Within days, more than 20 acres of land bordering the Everglades had been paved over and dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.” Today it is a massive construction site that already houses more than a thousand migrants in squalid conditions, and is slated to accommodate thousands more.

What can Earthjustice do?

There’s a lot that’s wrong about this facility. We are in close contact with other legal organizations who will be challenging the civil liberties aspects of it. And we can do our part too — especially when the Trump administration's cruel and unjust policies require the destruction of protected wetlands without any sort of environmental review.

So, four days after Florida seized the jetport for use as a mass detention center, we filed suit on behalf of our longtime partners and allies, Friends of the Everglades, along with the Center for Biological Diversity, challenging the destructive and unpermitted project.

You couldn’t tell a better story about the importance of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). With minimal planning and zero consultation, Florida threw up lights that can be seen for 15 miles in either direction, paved hundreds of thousands of square feet of wetlands with no stormwater management system, and dramatically increased the threats to already endangered species, including by reducing primary Florida panther habitat by about 2,000 acres from the 24-hour illumination alone.

What does this victory mean?

This case also shows that NEPA still has teeth. The Supreme Court’s misguided decision earlier this year in Seven County assumed that the government would still make efforts to follow the law, but this administration isn’t bothering. So earlier this month, after the defendants refused to pause construction for five days until the next hearing, a district court judge granted our motion for a temporary restraining order, barring further construction or expansion of the site for 14 days.

A TRO is by definition temporary, so we aren’t popping any corks yet. But securing one was hardly a foregone conclusion. In order to freeze the status quo, we had to convince the judge that we have a decent chance of succeeding on the merits and that there’s a significant risk of irreparable harm without a TRO. (The other side is arguing that this isn’t a federal project — a claim belied by abundant evidence, including federal officials’ own words.)

This site sprang up very quickly, but so did our lawsuit. The reason we were able to respond so quickly is that we have been working on Everglades issues for years in partnership with local and national conservation groups. Well, that and the ‘never rest’ ethic of our Florida Regional Office.

READ MORE: [link removed]

What happens next?

The team concluded the hearing by asking the court to extend the TRO and halt the operation of this detention center that is terrible for so many reasons, including what it is doing to our precious Everglades. The judge has indicated she intends to rule quickly.

Please join me in wishing them luck.

~Sam


Sam Sankar
SVP of Program,
Earthjustice


DONATE: [link removed]


************************************************************************************************
(c)2025 Earthjustice | 415-217-2000 | [email protected]
180 Steuart St. #194330, San Francisco, CA 94105

If you believe you received this message in error or wish to no longer receive email from us, please unsubscribe: [link removed] .