The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) and other organizations joined together Friday in filing a federal lawsuit in Fort Meyers Fla. challenging Florida’s authority to detain people at the “Alligator Alcatraz” facility. 

Reportedly described as a “hastily constructed facility in the middle of the Everglades which is surrounded by alligators, snakes, mosquitos and swampland at risk of dangerous flooding.”

The case will highlight the unprecedented use of the state of Florida’s expansive and unlawful claim of agreement 287(g) to secure independent state control over immigration detainees, a practice still in use even after last week’s court ruling ending transfers of individuals to the facility. 

The ACLU and other organizations contend the lack of authority to operate the facility and sets up unprecedented challenges for individuals placed in immigration detention—including, being held without charge, denied initial custody or bond determinations, lack of filing of notice of through the detainee locator system, nor access to attorneys or immigration court. 

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida, Community Justice Project and the National Immigrant Justice Center jointly filed the lawsuit on behalf of the people detained.

According to Friday’s ACLU press release, “The 287(g) program allows individual state and local officers to help with a narrow set of immigration enforcement tasks, subject to rigorous training and close supervision by federal officials. It does not allow them to set up their own independent detention operations. And it does not let state officers sub-delegate immigration authority to private contractors who do not and cannot participate in the 287(g) program. Florida officers are also acting without adequate training in the many complex facets of immigration law. Many are only spending a few hours online, compared to equivalent federal officers who receive multiple weeks of in person training.”

The reported violations of the 287(g) statute have immediately led to a host of real-world problems. Physical conditions at the facility are atrocious and dangerous. Detainees are going “off the grid” and being taken out of the normal systems for immigration detention and removal proceedings. Congress required the Department of Homeland Security to maintain custody of immigration detainees, and it imposed tight limits on the 287(g) program, precisely to avoid these kinds of problems.

“This facility has already become a disaster in the first few weeks of its operations, with mounting reports of disease, wrongful removals, and people being denied all kinds of basic rights. This is exactly why Congress did not allow states to set up their own immigration facilities. The government needs to follow the law when people’s lives and liberties are at stake. It’s time for this failed experiment to end,” said Spencer Amdur, staff attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project and lead counsel.

“Florida has wasted hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to unlawfully detain people in this abusive immigration detention center. Not only have the conditions been abhorrent, but the detention itself is unlawful. People are being held without charge, cut off from their attorneys, and made invisible in the immigration system. Families cannot even find out where their loved ones are. This is a crisis created entirely by the state’s reckless decision to ignore federal law and invent its own immigration jail in the middle of the Everglades. The harm being inflicted on our clients is immediate and irreparable, and it underscores why states are not allowed to overstep into federal immigration processes,” said Amy Godshall, legal fellow and immigrants’ rights attorney with the ACLU of Florida.

“Our immigrant communities have always been right about this: We are Floridians, too, and deserve the same respect, compassion and due process as anyone else in this state. Florida’s authoritarian experiment cannot continue unchecked, and we are confident the court will see that there is no lawful authority for Florida to operate this immigration facility,” said Miriam Haskell, senior attorney and director of litigation at Community Justice Project.

“It is truly unprecedented for a state to claim authority to operate its own, independent immigration detention system. The lack of accountability and resulting deprivation at this remote and inhumane detention camp in the Florida Everglades is exactly why Congress has made it unlawful and directed only the federal government to have custody over noncitizens as they go through the immigration system,” said Mark Fleming, associate director of litigation at the National Immigrant Justice Center.

The complaint is here: https://www.aclu.org/documents/m-a-v-guthrie-complaint

From the Everglades County Detention Facility to police departments across the country cooperating with ICE under shameful 287(g) agreements, immigrant communities are being terrorized by a system built on detention, surveillance, and deportation. But we’re organizing to resist.

Information for attendance on the national and international call to action is here: