{"id":26735,"date":"2025-07-21T18:45:15","date_gmt":"2025-07-21T18:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/26735\/"},"modified":"2025-07-21T18:45:15","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T18:45:15","slug":"florida-official-says-lawsuit-to-halt-alligator-alcatraz-filed-in-wrong-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/26735\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida official says lawsuit to halt Alligator Alcatraz filed in wrong court"},"content":{"rendered":"

Florida\u2019s top emergency official asked a federal judge on Monday to resist a request by environmentalists to halt an immigration detention center known as Alligator Alcatraz<\/a> in the middle of the Florida Everglades because their lawsuit was filed in the wrong jurisdiction.<\/p>\n

Even though the property is owned by Miami-Dade County, Florida\u2019s southern district is the wrong venue for the lawsuit since the detention center is located in neighboring Collier County, which is in the state\u2019s middle district. Decisions about the facility also were made in Tallahassee and Washington, Kevin Guthrie, executive director for the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said in a court filing.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd all the detention facilities, all the buildings, and all the paving at issue are sited in Collier County, not Miami-Dade,\u201d Guthrie said.<\/p>\n

Environmental groups filed a lawsuit<\/a> in Florida\u2019s southern district last month, asking for the project being built on an airstrip in the heart of the Florida Everglades<\/a> to be halted because the process didn\u2019t follow state and federal environmental laws. A virtual hearing was being held Monday on the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

Critics have condemned the facility as a cruel and inhumane threat to the ecologically sensitive wetlands, while Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and other state officials have defended it as part of the state\u2019s aggressive push<\/a> to support President Donald Trump\u2019s crackdown on illegal immigration<\/a>.<\/p>\n

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has praised Florida<\/a> for coming forward with the idea, as the department looks to significantly expand its immigration detention capacity.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform Bluesky: @mikeysid.bsky.social<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florida\u2019s top emergency official asked a federal judge on Monday to resist a request by environmentalists to halt…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26736,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[1147,1687,1685,2302,12,2822,2808,793,790,23293,4801,3130,2221,23294,111,2825,2819,79,3770,795,201],"class_list":["post-26735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-animals","tag-climate","tag-climate-and-environment","tag-courts","tag-donald-trump","tag-fl-state-wire","tag-florida","tag-general-news","tag-immigration","tag-kevin-guthrie","tag-kristi-noem","tag-lawsuits","tag-legal-proceedings","tag-mike-schneider","tag-politics","tag-prisons","tag-ron-desantis","tag-science","tag-u-s-department-of-homeland-security","tag-u-s-news","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}