Miccosukee Tribe Wants To Join Lawsuit To Halt The Everglades Immigrant Detention Center

By Jackie Llanos, Florida Phoenix

July 15, 2025

The Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida asked Monday to join a lawsuit to stop the further construction and operation of the state-run immigrant detention center in the Everglades.

Tribal leaders had already denounced the detention center, but the motion to intervene in the suit against federal, state, and local officials, which environmental groups filed, adds to the legal opposition to the facility.

All of the tribe’s active ceremonial sites and 15 villages are located within the Big Cypress National Preserve, which surrounds the detention center at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport. The tribe wants to protect its members’ homes and ability to conduct ceremonies, hunt, and fish, the filing in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida states.

“The construction and operation of a detention facility without necessary environmental studies potentially poses a substantial threat to the rights and interests of the Tribe and the livelihood of Tribal members who live adjacent thereto,” wrote the attorneys representing the Miccosukee Tribe.

“Additionally, the unknown environmental impacts of the detention facility’s construction and operation may affect the number and quality of game and/or fish stocks such that Tribe’s traditional rights — guaranteed by federal and state law — are rendered meaningless.”

Two environmental groups, Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity, brought the suit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Florida Division of Emergency Management, and Miami-Dade County on June 27. They allege construction of the detention center violates a federal law that requires environmental analysis of potential harms and that the public did not get an opportunity to comment.

So far, U.S. District Judge Jose Martinez hasn’t taken action on the temporary restraining order the environmental groups seek. They filed another motion asking the judge to rule by Friday after he didn’t order construction to stop before immigrants awaiting deportation arrived at the detention center on July 2.

Gov. Ron DeSantis has dismissed the concerns environmental groups are raising as illegitimate, saying they just want to stop deportations. At the same time, the federal government is skirting responsibility for the detention center in its attempt to ward off the lawsuit.

DHS neither funded nor authorized the tent and trailer detention center, counsel for the department wrote in a filing opposing environmental groups’ request that the court halt the site.

A result other than stopping the construction and operation of the detention center would be unacceptable to the tribe.

The filing in federal court also details how the detention center, which Florida Republicans are calling “Alligator Alcatraz” and raising campaign cash by hawking related merchandise, is disrupting nearby villages. One of the villages, the Panther-Osceola Camp, is approximately 1,000 feet from the boundary of the detention center.

“At present, residents report that ingress and egress to their village have been impacted by increased traffic flow along US-41. Further, given the village’s proximity to the facility, residents are concerned about impacts to their freedom to hunt and fish in the immediate area adjacent to a securitized federal detention and immigration facility, as well as the possibility of a facility escape posing a security risk for their community,” the filing to the court states.

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