MIAMI— The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in the heart of the Everglades known as “Alligator Alcatraz” can keep operating even though it hasn’t gone through any environmental review.

Everglades groups vowed to fight on, despite today’s ruling. The ruling invalidates the preliminary injunction that U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams issued in August 2025 to prevent environmental harm caused by the facility. Today’s ruling allows legal challenges to continue, including deliberation on the merits of the original case.

The ruling is a setback for the imperiled wildlife and fragile ecosystems of the Big Cypress National Preserve, including the Florida panthers that frequent this part of the Everglades.

“This fight is far from over. Alligator Alcatraz was hastily erected in one of the most fragile ecosystems in the country without the most basic environmental review, at immense human and ecological cost,” said Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades. “We are pursuing every legal avenue available to right this wrong. Alligator Alcatraz will go down in history as a boondoggle to taxpayers and a flagrant assault on the Everglades, and we look forward to returning to the district court to advance our case to shut it down,”

“Our hearts are heavy for all the harm that will continue to fall upon those in the heart of Big Cypress, but this disappointing decision won’t stop our challenges to the numerous environmental violations that the Trump administration is overseeing there,” said Elise Bennett, Florida and Caribbean director and senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “We’ll keep fighting because the Trump and DeSantis administrations’ obsession with sacrificing our Everglades, endangered panthers and wild waters to their cruel detention center is utterly indefensible.”

"Alligator Alcatraz is a stain on the Everglades, on the rule of law, and on our collective conscience — and we will not stop until it is shut down,” said Paul J. Schwiep of Coffey Burlington and counsel for Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity.

“We will continue our legal fight to protect the Everglades against this illegal detention camp,” said Tania Galloni, managing attorney for the Florida office of Earthjustice. “The people who set aside public lands for the Big Cypress National Preserve did not intend for it to house a massive jail, filled with blaring lights, generating runoff from a parade of trucks hauling in water and hauling out sewage, spewing pollution from diesel generators, and causing the shocking human misery for those who are detained there.”

A key question in the legal case is the federal government’s involvement in the multi-million dollar detention center. Under federal law, projects built with federal funds or subject to federal control are required to go through a complete environmental review — which the I.C.E detention center did not.

Public records obtained through a separate lawsuit filed by Friends of the Everglades show that FEMA committed hundreds of millions of dollars for Florida to build and operate the facility. Investigative reporting by the Washington Post also found that former U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem herself helped orchestrate the funding deal.

The case began June 27, 2025, when Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity, represented by Paul Schwiep, Scott Hiaasen, Earthjustice and Center for Biological Diversity attorneys, originally filed suit against the Department of Homeland Security, I.C.E, the Florida Division of Emergency Management and Miami-Dade County to stop the project after the facility was hastily built with zero environmental review. The Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, which has villages close to the unpermitted I.C.E facility, joined the lawsuit.