The legal loophole Florida is using to keep people locked in cages in the Everglades

Florida in Five: Five stories to read from the past week in Florida politics.

Aug 10, 2025

Photo credit: U.S. Department of Homeland Security / Wikipedia Commons

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Welcome to another installment of Florida in Five: Five* stories you need to read from the past week in Florida politics.

It should be a simple question:

Who is in charge of “Alligator Alcatraz,” the mosquito-infested detention camp in the middle of the Florida Everglades where the Trump and DeSantis administrations are locking up immigrants — many of whom have never faced any kind of criminal charges — in group cages covered by leaky tents.

The answer, it seems, depends on which law they are trying to dodge.

That became clear last week, when lawyers for the state and federal governments were finally forced to lay some of their cards on the table in a pair of lawsuits targeting the Everglades facility.

Their filings revealed how the two governments are attempting to open up a legal loophole at the isolated site — a loophole that, if not closed, could allow them to evade accountability over everything from denying people their constitutionally protected civil rights to damaging one of the most fragile ecosystems on the planet.

To quickly explain: The president has sweeping authority to set the nation’s immigration policy and carry out programs like mass deportation. And courts have relatively little power to review the president’s immigration decisions.

But states have almost no immigration power at all. That’s why courts have so far barred Florida from enforcing a state law attempting to imprison people who enter the state without proper immigration documentation.

The federal government can, however, enlist states to help with immigration enforcement through what are known as “287(g) agreements” — agreements that empower state and local law enforcement officers to perform some of the duties of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

That’s the legal backdrop under which the Trump and DeSantis administrations opened their Everglades detention center last month.

The state of Florida built the facility — committing, updated records show, more than $330 million and counting in taxpayer money toward the project. The state is also operating the camp, staffing it largely with contractors from companies like Jacksonville-based Critical Response Strategies, Canadian private security giant GardaWorld, and Miami’s CDR Companies.

A look at some of the largest contracts Florida has awarded in connection with the immigrant detention center in the Everglades. (Source: Seeking Rents research)

But Florida is doing it on on behalf of the federal government through 287(g) agreements.

“Alligator Alcatraz is a Florida-constructed and Florida-operated facility that temporarily houses federal immigration detainees pursuant to 287(g) agreements between State of Florida agencies and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),” attorneys for the Trump administration wrote in a brief filed Thursday in one of the federal court cases.

That should — at least in theory — make it crystal clear who is ultimately in charge of this swamp prison: The federal government.

The DeSantis administration, after all, doesn’t have the power to detain immigrants on its own. No state does. Florida can only do so under power that has been delegated by the Trump administration.

A host of state agencies have signed 287(g) agreements with ICE — from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Florida Highway Patrol to agencies in charge of licensing businesses, managing wildlife, and running the state lottery. And most of those agreements explicitly say that immigration enforcement actions “will be supervised and directed by ICE.”

But there’s one important state agency that has not signed a 287(g) agreement with ICE: The Florida Division of Emergency Management — which just just happens to be the agency that actually built and manages the Everglades detention center.

The Trump and DeSantis administration are trying to exploit that gap.

Take a federal lawsuit challenging the Everglades detention center on environmental grounds. Led by advocacy groups like Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity, the suit claims the Trump and DeSantis administrations violated a federal law known as the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires federal agencies to assess the ecological impacts of major projects.

In that suit, the Trump and DeSantis administrations are trying to portray the Everglades facility as a purely state project managed by FDEM. And state projects, they argue, aren’t subject to the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA.

NEPA “does not apply to the State’s decision to erect a temporary detention facility — even if the federal government is somehow involved in that decision,” lawyers for the DeSantis administration wrote in a recent brief in that case. “Indeed, Plaintiff’s motion says nothing about NEPA’s application to this project, which was approved by the State and is being built by the State.”

But then there’s the second federal lawsuit, which was filed by detainees at the Everglades detention center and an assortment of law firms and legal aid organizations. That suit alleges that the Trump and DeSantis administrations are violating constitutionally protected speech and due process rights by denying detainees access to lawyers and court proceedings.

In that case, the Trump and DeSantis administrations claim the that the state is simply following orders — in hopes of hiding behind the federal government’s broad authority to carry out deportations without much judicial interference.

“Accordingly, plaintiffs cannot sue state officials…for their actions in detaining illegal aliens under a 287(g) agreement because, for that limited purpose, those state officials are ‘acting under color of Federal authority,’” lawyers for DeSantis wrote in a brief in that case.

In other words, the state of Florida is in charge of Alligator Alcatraz in one courtroom. But the federal government is in charge in the other.

To resolve this contradiction, lawyers for the Trump and DeSantis administration are trying to separate — legally speaking — the prison they just built from the imprisoning they are now doing inside it.

“The Facility was constructed and is now maintained and operated by FDEM…All activities involving construction, maintenance, and operation of the Facility are dictated by state officials without involvement of the federal government,” lawyers for the state wrote in one of their briefs.

“But,” they quickly added, “with respect to the limited function of maintaining physical custody of illegal aliens at the Facility, the State acts pursuant to agreements between state law enforcement agencies and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement…”

That’s the loophole they are trying to open.

It’s a flimsy argument. But Florida and the feds are now trying to retroactively reinforce it.

Specifically, records shows that the Trump and DeSantis administrations last week suddenly rewrote the 287(g) agreement between ICE and Florida’s Department of Corrections, the agency that operates state prisons. The original agreement was signed in August 2020. But it was amended on Wednesday — one day before Florida and the feds had to submit the document in court.

The revamped agreement gives the Department of Corrections the power to detain immigrants in facilities that it does not operate itself. That means sites like the Everglades detention center, which is technically run by the Florida Division of Emergency Management — and which, remember, does not have a 287(g) agreement of its own.

What’s more, that power was made retroactive to June 1 — just before the Everglades facility began construction.

And perhaps most significantly, the revised agreement also blurs the lines of authority at Alligator Alcatraz.

Like every other state agency that has signed a 287(g) agreement, the Department of Corrections’ original agreement with ICE had a section that said, explicitly, that all immigration enforcement activities under the agreement would be “supervised and directed by ICE.”

An excerpt from the Florida Department of Corrections’ original 287(g) agreement with ICE, singed in August 2020.

The revised agreement is a lot fuzzier.

“ICE shall provide oversight of the detention of the detention authority delegated by this Addendum to ensure compliance with federal immigration law and ICE policies,” the new version reads. “Upon demand of ICE, any alien detained under such authority shall be returned to the physical custody of ICE or released, as directed by ICE.”

But then it adds, “The Department [of Corrections] retains supervision of all other aspects of the employment and performance of duties of all persons providing detention services under this addendum.”

An excerpt from the Florida Department of Corrections’ revised 287(g) agreement with ICE, which was signed last week.

It sure looks like an attempt to create a paper trail in support of the loophole that the Trump and DeSantis administrations are now trying to open up in court — the notion that Florida is in charge of the prison but the feds are in charge of the imprisonment.

This is part of a larger pattern of lawlessness at Alligator Alcatraz.

The Trump and DeSantis administrations have repeatedly flouted laws and abused legal powers at the site — from seizing the property under a nearly three-year-old state of emergency, to suspending rules requiring that contracts be competitively bid and correctional officers pass background checks, to hiding contracts and ignoring auditors.

That said, it’s not yet clear if this latest ploy will work.

The judges presiding over the two key federal cases have yet to issue full rulings — though one of them just ordered a 14-day halt to any further construction at the site while she continues to hear arguments.

*To paraphrase Barbossa, five is more what you’d call a guideline than an actual rule.