New court filings allege that federal and state officials withheld evidence of the Trump administration’s involvement in the Everglades detention facility known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” a revelation that could revive a court-ordered shutdown. The Jan. 7 filings come as the Miccosukee Tribe presses ahead with its legal challenge amid President Donald Trump’s recent veto of legislation expanding the tribe’s control over Everglades lands.
The filings, submitted by Friends of the Everglades, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Miccosukee Tribe, argue that newly disclosed records show that the federal government helped fund and operate the facility from its earliest stages. The defendants, including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), have repeatedly argued that the facility — located in the Big Cypress National Preserve region of the Florida Everglades — was a strictly state-run operation managed by the Florida Division of Emergency Management (FDEM).
If the project is deemed a federal action, it would trigger mandatory environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which requires an environmental review for major federal projects.
The records cited in the filing include a June 20 email documenting an agreement between Florida officials and the federal government to allow FDEM to detain noncitizens using federal immigration authority under Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, with federal funding support. Additional emails show that Florida formally applied for federal funding for the detention facility by Aug. 7, followed by a federal grant award letter dated Aug. 15, that provided guidance on how those funds could be spent. Plaintiffs say the documents were never provided to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida despite discovery and public records requests, and that the agencies failed to update earlier sworn declarations after they were rendered inaccurate by new information.
“We now know that the federal and state government had records confirming that they closely partnered on this facility from the beginning but failed to disclose them to the district court,” said Tania Galloni, an attorney with Earthjustice, which represents Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity, in an emailed statement. “They cannot continue to evade responsibility for what they’ve done to the Everglades. The government is not above the law.”
DHS did not respond to Prism’s request for comment.
A Legal Fight Over Environmental Law and Tribal Sovereignty
Since it was first announced in June of last year, “Alligator Alcatraz” has been at the center of a high-stakes legal battle over environmental law, federal authority, and Indigenous sovereignty. The Miccosukee Tribe announced that it was entering the legal fight on July 14, shortly after the environmental groups first filed suit. In its brief, the tribe echoes the environmental groups’ findings and frames the dispute as an existential threat to tribal land, culture, and community safety.
“The Tribe’s constitutional commitment to this land runs deep,” the brief states. “It’s written into their Constitution to protect the Everglades because the Everglades protected them when they were being hunted by the Government.”
The brief adds that the tribe “had no notice of the facility,” even though federal environmental and historic preservation laws state agencies must consult with federally recognized tribes when undertaking major federal actions that may affect Tribal lands or cultural sites. The physical barriers erected around the site, the brief notes, now block tribal members’ primary access to Big Cypress for traditional activities.
In a December press release, the tribe described the facility’s proximity to Miccosukee communities. A tribal village sits approximately 1,000 feet from the entrance to the detention camp; 11 villages are located within three miles; a school bus stop lies directly in front of the facility; and a K–12 school is less than 10 minutes away.
In the press release, the tribe said its “use and occupancy rights in the Big Cypress National Preserve, and the safety and security of the community in the villages near to the detention camp, have been substantially impacted.”
Tribal leaders also warned that the facility threatens subsistence fishing and hunting, ceremonial practices, and the health of the Everglades ecosystem that sustains Miccosukee cultural life and recharges the Biscayne Aquifer, a primary source of drinking water for millions of Floridians.
“The Miccosukee Tribe is at home in the Everglades and the Big Cypress,” Chair Talbert Cypress said in the release. “We have a Tribal constitutional duty to defend our homelands from environmental degradation and defend our people from big government overreach.”
Those concerns are echoed in a resolution adopted by the National Congress of American Indians at its 2025 annual convention in November. The resolution, titled “To Call for the Prohibition of Using Indian Country as Venue for Internment or Detention Camps,” situates “Alligator Alcatraz” within a broader national pattern and draws a parallel to the historical placement of Japanese internment camps on or near tribal lands during World War II.
The resolution states that the facility was constructed on land where the Miccosukee and Seminole Tribes hold federally recognized use and occupancy rights, under a state of emergency declared by Gov. Ron DeSantis, without compliance with federal, state, county, or tribal permitting regimes or consultation with affected tribes. The resolution warns that bypassing environmental review and tribal consultation threatens treaty-protected rights, noting that “the fulsome exercise of Tribal rights depends on the health of the ecosystem.”
New construction at the detention center was briefly halted on Aug. 21, when U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams issued a temporary restraining order. The order paused further building, stopped the arrival of new detainees, and directed that the facility be dismantled within 60 days, citing the lack of required environmental review and the risk of irreparable harm to the Everglades and nearby Miccosukee communities.
But on Sept. 4, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit temporarily stayed the injunction. The appellate court did not rule on the legality of the facility, but placed the lower court’s order on hold while the appeal proceeds, allowing detention operations to continue.
Tribal leaders say the case is not only about a single detention facility, but about whether emergency powers can be used to bypass environmental safeguards and tribal consultation altogether. The outcome, tribal advocates argue, would determine whether environmental law and tribal sovereignty remain meaningful protections, or if they can be sidelined when government authorities say so.
Political Retaliation
The tribe’s legal intervention was followed by a political setback. On Dec. 30, Trump vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have expanded and clarified the Miccosukee Tribe’s control over certain lands in the Florida Everglades.
In his veto message, Trump explicitly referenced the tribe’s opposition to “Alligator Alcatraz,”; supporters argued that the veto was retaliation against the tribe for exercising their legal rights.
In a Dec. 31 statement responding to the veto, Cypress said the tribe was “disappointed” by the White House’s decision to reject the bipartisan Miccosukee Reserved Area Amendments Act, which he described as a measure aimed at protecting a historic tribal village facing serious flood and environmental risks. Cypress emphasized that the tribe “has never sought to obstruct the President’s immigration agenda,” but instead acted to ensure “sufficient environmental due diligence” to protect federal restoration investments in the Everglades. The legislation, he said, was not about “special treatment,” but about public safety, environmental stewardship, and clarifying land status for tribal members who have lived in the area for generations.
In response to the veto, Elise Bennett, Florida and Caribbean director and an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, told Prism in an email, “The Miccosukee Tribe has such close, enduring ties to the Everglades. It is revolting that the president would retaliate against their effort to defend a place that is not only deeply important to the Tribe but to so many Americans in Florida and beyond.”
A History of Resistance in Big Cypress
This isn’t the first time the tribe has confronted the federal government over development in Big Cypress. In the late 1960s, the tribe joined scientists and conservationists in opposing the Everglades Jetport, a massive airport that threatened to permanently alter the ecosystem and disrupt Miccosukee homelands. That resistance ultimately led to the project’s abandonment, the creation of Big Cypress National Preserve, and the signing of NEPA. In 1969, the tribe and its allies prevailed. Today, they are invoking that same law.
“This detention facility was planned in secret, built in secret, and operated in secret — concealing devastating impacts to Big Cypress National Preserve and the Everglades,” said Eve Samples, executive director at Friends of the Everglades, in an emailed statement. “Friends of the Everglades was founded by Marjory Stoneman Douglas in 1969 to protect this very site from harmful development, and we won’t stop fighting until it’s safe and the government complies with all environmental laws.”
What Comes Next
According to Bennett, the new findings regarding federal involvement “confirms the reasonableness of the district court’s factual findings that there was a state-federal partnership for Florida to detain noncitizens with a commitment of federal funding, which affects a central issue in this appeal: whether there was a final, major federal action requiring compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.”
If the appeals court ultimately upholds Williams’ findings, the stay would be lifted, and the injunction halting construction and detention operations would again be in force.
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