Court orders Florida Division of Emergency Management to comply with Friends of the Everglades public records requests on ICE detention center

Court orders Florida Division of Emergency Management to comply with Friends of the Everglades public records requests on ICE detention center

Florida and federal agencies have been withholding information to avoid complying with federal environmental law

Contacts

Eve Samples, Friends of the Everglades, (772) 485-8164  [email protected]

Tania Galloni, Earthjustice, (305) 726-1627 [email protected] 

Paul Schwiep, Coffey Burlington, [email protected]

In a court hearing today, Friends of the Everglades continued its legal fight to get public records about the Florida Division of Emergency Management's arrangement with federal agencies to fund an ICE detention center known as "Alligator Alcatraz" in the Everglades. The court ordered the agency to comply with Friends' records requests within 21 days.

The failure to disclose those records violates Florida's Government-in-the-Sunshine Act, which requires agencies to make official records available to the public. Florida and federal agencies have been withholding information about federal involvement and funding to claim they were not required to comply with federal environmental law before building the facility.

The lawsuit was filed in the Second Judicial Circuit for Leon County.

Friends of the Everglades, represented in this matter by Earthjustice and attorney Paul Schwiep of the Coffey Burlington law firm, has been requesting public records about the hastily constructed Everglades detention center, under Fla. Stat. Ch. 119, since June 24, 2025. The detention center is still operating because an August 2025 court injunction to shut it down over environmental violations was paused while the state and federal agencies appeal. The court of appeals has scheduled a hearing on that case for April 2026.

In the federal lawsuit challenging the government's failure to account for the detention center's environmental impacts, Florida and federal agencies claimed in September that there was no federal involvement - including any federal funding decision - that would require compliance with federal environmental law.

But new evidence produced in response to this lawsuit confirms that state and federal officials agreed as early as June, before the facility opened, that the facility would receive millions of dollars in federal funding. The Department of Homeland Security provided an official "notice of award allocation" to Florida for $608.4 million in July. These facts were not disclosed to the public, while the agencies continued to claim in court that no funding application or decision had been made. There is every reason to believe that more records exist that have yet to be produced.

"The State and the Trump Administration have taken the untenable position that Florida constructed a 5,000-bed immigration detention facility in the Everglades for federal use without any coordination or communication between them. That claim defies common sense. Documents exist, and under the Florida Constitution, they belong to Florida's taxpayers and should be disclosed," said attorney Paul Schwiep of Coffey Burlington.

"Alligator Alcatraz was shrouded in secrecy from the start, as the government tried to dodge its legal duty to protect the Everglades. If the state won't voluntarily comply with public records laws about this ICE detention center, we must insist on accountability through the courts," said Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades.

"Florida's withholding of these public records is emblematic of how they worked with the federal government to put a mass ICE detention center in the Everglades with complete disregard for federal law and the public's right to information," said Tania Galloni, Managing Attorney for the Florida office of Earthjustice.

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