Immigrant detainee at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ agrees to leave US, asks that lawsuit be dismissed
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — One of the three court challenges to an immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades has ended after the immigrant detainee who filed the lawsuit agreed to be removed from the United States and will be out of the country soon, his attorneys said.
The detainee at the facility dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” asked that his case in federal court in Fort Myers be dismissed Monday.
“Petitioner is no longer detained at Alligator Alcatraz, he has formally agreed to be removed, and he will soon have left the United States,” his attorneys wrote in a court motion. One of his attorneys, Spencer Amdur of the American Civil Liberties Union, said by phone Tuesday that the detainee, referred to only as M.A. in court documents, would be returning to Chile.
The lawsuit claimed that immigration was a federal issue, and Florida agencies and private contractors hired by the state had no authority to operate the facility under federal law. Detainees who entered the facility disappeared from the normal detainee tracking system and had difficulty accessing legal help, the lawsuit said.
Florida has led other states in constructing facilities to support President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. Besides the Everglades facility, which received its first detainees in July, Florida has opened an immigration detention center in the northeastern part of the state and is looking at opening a third facility in the Panhandle.
M.A. is married to a U.S. citizen and has five stepchildren who are U.S. citizens. He entered the United States in 2018 on a visa and later applied for asylum. Before his arrest last July, he had a work permit, a Social Security card and a driver’s license, according to court documents.
After his arrest, but before he was sent to the Everglades facility, officers pressured him to sign an English-only form that he didn’t understand but was later told it was a voluntary removal form, according to court documents.
During his time at the Everglades detention facility, he was twice hospitalized and put in a wheelchair because of a condition in which he was unable to feel his legs. “M.A. entered the facility able to walk, but he is now in a wheelchair,” his lawsuit said.
M.A.’s case was one of three federal lawsuits challenging practices at the immigration detention center that was built last summer at a remote airstrip in the Florida Everglades by the administration of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.
In a separate case, a federal judge in Miami last summer ordered the facility to wind down operations over two months because officials had failed to do a review of the detention center’s environmental impact. But an appellate court panel put that decision on hold for the time being, allowing the facility to stay open.
In the third lawsuit, detainees were seeking a ruling that would ensure that they have access to confidential communications with their attorneys. During an online meeting Tuesday, attorneys for the detainees and lawyers for the state and federal government defendants outlined plans for a hearing at the end of the month over a request for a preliminary injunction. ACLU attorneys said they would likely call former detainees at the facility now living outside the United States who would testify remotely as witnesses.
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