MIAMI — U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams sharply questioned lawyers for the state of Florida and federal government Wednesday about why the “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration detention facility had to be built on an airstrip in the Everglades’ delicate ecosystem.
She questioned why the tented facility, which is expected to have the capacity to hold as many as 4,000 undocumented immigrants at a time, wasn’t constructed elsewhere, including outside a standing detention center, at an abandoned commercial property, a decommissioned airport or “an abandoned speedway” — in an apparent reference to the “Speedway Slammer” detention facility under development in Indiana.
“The only question is: Why in the middle of the Everglades?” she asked principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson. “There has been no evidence as to why we need to have it in the middle of the Everglades.”
State and federal lawyers explained the location was helpful for sending out deportation flights directly from the airstrip, and that the remote site was important for public safety. But Williams, an Obama-era appointee, shot back that deportation flights could leave out of other Florida airports.
