A federal judge appeared skeptical on Monday of a lawsuit challenging the legal access detainees at Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” have, as the newly constructed immigration detention center faces another legal challenge.
Judge Rodolfo Ruiz of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida heard arguments in a hearing over a proposed preliminary injunction brought by lawyers representing detained immigrants at the detention facility in the Florida Everglades. Their proposal would require detainees to have communication with their lawyers. Ruiz grilled the lawyers for the detained immigrants over what they specifically wanted from the court, after they had already gradually received more access for detainees to speak with lawyers.
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“You’d have to have some metric,” Ruiz said. “It’s just, it’s not more necessarily that it can’t be done, but I think you can understand my concerns with crafting a scope of release that would work if on the ground, we’re getting all of these delays.”
The lawyers for the detainees argued in court documents ahead of the hearing that Alligator Alcatraz is an “unprecedented situation where hundreds of detainees are held incommunicado, with no ability to access the courts, under legal authority that has never been explained and may not exist.”
“The government has been in such a rush to build and detain people at the facility that it has run roughshod over constitutional concerns,” ACLU attorney Eunice Cho said Monday on behalf of the detainees suing the government.
The lawsuit named officials from both the Trump administration and the Florida government. Federal officials essentially argued that those who brought the lawsuit were more concerned about the detentions than about access to attorneys.
“I think the best argument they’re attempting to advance today on the federal side is that this is almost a trojan horse, the First Amendment argument is all window dressing, that at its core, this is really attempting to challenge kind of the underlying immigration determinations or detention determinations being made,” Ruiz said, summarizing his view of the key argument from the federal government.
One of the matters that was resolved quickly in the hearing was which immigration court oversees Alligator Alcatraz. A lawyer for the federal government told the judge the immigration court at Krome North Service Processing Center serves that role, resolving one of the claims brought in the lawsuit.
An unresolved aspect of the case is whether the Southern District of Florida is the proper venue for the lawsuit against state and federal officials. With Alligator Alcatraz being located in the Middle District of Florida, Ruiz appeared open to ruling it is the better venue for the lawsuit against state defendants, while the Southern District could likely remain the venue for federal defendants.
Ruiz said he would rule quickly on the motion for the preliminary injunction after not issuing a ruling at the end of Monday’s hearing.
FEDERAL JUDGE HALTS CONSTRUCTION OF ‘ALLIGATOR ALCATRAZ’ OVER ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGE
Alligator Alcatraz, which was announced and began construction in June, is involved in a separate lawsuit in federal court over the site’s environmental impact. A group of environmentalists sued the government over whether required environmental reviews were conducted prior to constructing the facility on the seldom-used airstrip in the Florida Everglades.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams paused further construction on the facility, though she allowed operations to continue, for 14 days after two days of hearings in the case earlier this month. The pause is set to expire later this week, with Williams expected to make a ruling in the coming days.