Who runs Alligator Alcatraz? DeSantis and Trump administrations respond in court
The state and federal governments asserted in court and in legal filings submitted late Thursday that agreements authorizing officers in state agencies to perform certain federal immigration enforcement functions — such as detention — govern operations at the unprecedented complex known as Alligator Alcatraz.
One of those 287(g) agreements, with the Florida Department of Corrections, was amended on Wednesday to say that corrections officers could detain immigrants outside state prisons at ICE-approved facilities — and applied retroactively to cover the six weeks the facility has been open.
The state's attorney, Nicholas Meros, pointed to agreements with nine state agencies — including the Florida Department of Lottery, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement — to show why the DeSantis administration is able to 'detain and supervise the detention of illegal aliens' at Alligator Alcatraz.
All nine agencies 'are performing detention duties at the facility,' Meros wrote in a court filing Thursday. It is unclear how many of the agencies' officers are currently deputized and working at the site.
The governments' answers come as immigration attorneys and environmental groups have questioned the legality of the detention center, which appears to operate differently than other facilities run by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Most immigration detention centers are run by the federal government or on its behalf, through contracts with private companies or state and municipal authorities. Alligator Alcatraz is run by the state, with limited access to federal immigration courts, according to attorneys and legal documents.
In two separate lawsuits filed in federal court in Miami, lawyers and judges last month demanded the DeSantis and Trump administrations produce legal agreement between the state and federal governments related to the detention camp's operations. Thursday's filings offered the first glimpse at their explanation.
Notably, there was no agreement with the Florida Division of Emergency Management, which has overseen the construction and operation of the site since its inception. There was also no evidence of an Intergovernmental Service Agreement, which typically authorizes state or municipal officials to help ICE manage detention facilities.
Paul Schwiep, a lawyer who is representing environmental groups in a lawsuit over the site's operations, argued in a court hearing Thursday that the site itself should have a 287(g) agreement or an intergovernmental agreement in order to have authority over detainees.
'Either the state is operating this detention center under color of federal authority, or they are operating a completely rogue facility that is unregulated and unlawful,' Schwiep said.
The state's argument
To establish legal custody of detainees sent to Alligator Alcatraz, the state is relying partly on a document signed with the Florida Department of Corrections one day before the judge's Aug. 7 deadline to provide copies of any agreement explaining the state and federal governments' relationship to the site.
The document — an amendment to the state agency's 287(g) agreement from 2020 — says the state's corrections department 'may provide detention services for ICE-approved, state-operated detention facilities, other than the Department's correctional facilities, that maintain, on ICE's behalf, custody of aliens detained pursuant to the federal immigration laws.'
Prior to being amended, the agency's 2020 agreement only covered correctional facilities within the Department of Corrections.
The document, signed on Aug. 5 and 6, now covers 'persons providing detention services operating under the supervision of the Department' dating back to the start of June, the month in which the Florida Division of Emergency Management seized an airfield from Miami-Dade County and began building the country's newest immigration detention center.
The Department of Corrections is the only agency with a 287(g) agreement involving correctional facilities. The state agency did not respond to a request seeking comment on how many deputized correctional officers were currently staffing the makeshift detention camp.
In court filings, the Division of Emergency Management, the Florida State Guard and two private contractors — Critical Response Strategies and GardaWorld Security Services Inc. — were identified as the entities responsible for carrying out detention operations at the detention camp. The State Guard, which is a civilian military force under the governor's command, is the only one with a 287(g) agreement with the federal government, though it was not part of the responses to the court order.
Questions in Court
Lawyers representing the Trump administration provided different documents on Thursday in response to demands to explain how Alligator Alcatraz operates.
During a court hearing on Thursday in a lawsuit over the environmental impact of the detention center, federal lawyers said the 287(g) agreement between the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and ICE established the authority to run the facility.
Marissa Piropato, an attorney representing the Department of Homeland Security, said the federal government had no final say over actions at Alligator Alcatraz — where it was built, how it was built or how many detainees are held there.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams asked whether there were any federal officials who visited the site at all. Piropato said there are ICE agents who go every so often, but they do not supervise the facility on a daily basis.
Williams pointed out that legally, immigration detention facilities must be run by trained immigration personnel. She asked who those personnel would be, if not federal agents. Piropato said it would be through officials who entered into 287(g) agreements. When asked to specify, she said that the FDLE agreement was the one that applied to Alligator Alcatraz in particular.
At the time, federal lawyers had submitted the FDLE 287(g) document as their evidence of an agreement. The position made it into Williams' order on Thursday halting construction at the site for two weeks.
State lawyers, however, submitted Florida Highway Patrol's 287(g) document. FHP was not brought up during the hearing.
When attorneys for the state and federal government responded to an order in a separate lawsuit to provide legal agreements establishing the operation of the site, they submitted nine 287(g) agreements.
FDLE did not respond to a request seeking comment.
A staging facility
In a little over a month, more than 1,000 immigrant detainees have been held at the Florida immigration detention center, which the DeSantis administration erected in eight days on an airfield in the Everglades.
It was billed as a 'one-stop shop' for detention and deportations — and DeSantis has falsely said that site is only holding immigrants whom a judge has ordered removed from the country.
Juan Lopez Vega, the deputy field office director for ICE in Miami, said in a sworn declaration submitted on Thursday that detainees who end up at the site are 'at various stages of immigration processing.' He said that while ICE may make decisions regarding transfers, Florida 'retains ultimate decision authority as to who is detained in the facility.'
The detention camp, Lopez Vega added, is meant to provide short-term housing while ICE figures out where to place immigrant detainees on a long-term basis, to start or to continue their removal proceedings, or to start the process of deporting them.
The statement was filed in response to a lawsuit that stems from immigration attorneys facing struggles with legal access. In the lawsuit, lawyers maintain that immigrants held at the site are unable to challenge their detention because there is no federal immigration court overseeing their cases there.
On Thursday, Lopez Vega said in court filings that detainees can file a request for a bond hearing 'with the immigration court with jurisdiction over their removal proceedings or an immigration court with the jurisdiction over the place of their detention.'
But immigration lawyers say immigrant detainees are held at Alligator Alcatraz without access to immigration court.
Lopez Vega said that if a detainee had already requested a bond hearing with the immigration court at Krome, then they would be transported to the immigration court there. However, for weeks lawyers had said that Krome was not scheduling bond hearings for detainees detained at Alligator Alcatraz and some had been canceled.
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