A South Florida federal judge turned aside the Trump administration’s effort to pause the wind-down of the “Alligator Alcatraz” detention center while it appeals an initial order.
Miami US District Judge Kathleen Williams denied the Department of Homeland Security’s request Wednesday for a stay of her order from last week barring the facility from admitting new detainees and requiring parts of it to be dismantled in 60 days.
Meanwhile, the Everglades-situated facility — which holds up to 2,000 detainees and had been in the process of expanding to hold as many as 4,000 — is in the process of being cleared out, a DHS source told The Post.
The current detainee population sits at just 100, the source said.
DHS lawyers asked for a stay of Williams’ order from last week while they appeal on the grounds the judge unlawfully interfered with the administration’s prerogative to fight illegal immigration.
But Williams — an appointee of President Barack Obama — reiterated her findings from her earlier ruling, saying the feds provided “no new evidence or argument about the particular dangerousness of the detainee population … or the need for a detention facility in this particular location.”
Her ruling added that “immigration enforcement goals will not be thwarted by a pause in operations.”
Environmental and civil rights groups, as well as the local Miccosukee Tribe, have brought several suits to shutter the detention center, claiming officials failed to conduct a required review of the environmental impacts on the surrounding wetlands, endangered species and on the tribe’s water and food supply.
The suits also claimed the facility could undo billions of dollars worth of work on environmental restoration.
A lawyer for the administration of Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis had argued Alligator Alcatraz was a state project, and thus was not subject to federal environmental review laws.
Williams found the government violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in bypassing the review process and ordered a halt to bringing in new detainees and the removal of fencing, lighting, gas hookups, generators, sewage and waste within 60 days.
She also previously told the feds to stop construction that would have expanded the facility and allowed it to hold double the population.
“The Court described substantial evidence provided by Plaintiffs of several kinds of ongoing and likely future irreparable harm from the project, including to the surrounding wetlands, endangered species, and those who live, recreate, research in, and work to preserve the area,” Williams wrote Wednesday, referencing her decision from a week earlier.
The site — which sits on an abandoned airport nestled deep in the national park — opened July 1 after just eight days of construction after DeSantis exercised his emergency powers.
During a press conference Wednesday, DeSantis said: “Obviously, there’s litigation that’s been going on that DHS is a party to and so that may be an influence about where they’re sending people.
“But we’re ready to help, we want to continue to help, we have to continue with this mission, it’s important and ultimately it’s gonna be good for the state of Florida.”
A DHS official Thursday said the agency was “complying” with the order and relocating detainees to other facilities, but blasted Williams as an “activist judge.”
Her order “is yet another attempt to prevent the president from fulfilling the American people’s mandate to remove the worst of the worst — including gang members, murderers, pedophiles, terrorists, and rapists from our country,” the person said.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
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