(NewsNation) — An organizer with a Florida conservationist group is alleging a lack of transparency from government officials over the immigration detention center dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.”
“The federal government needs to look before it leaps, even when it’s acting in partnership with the state of Florida,” Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades, told NewsNation.
Friends of the Everglades, along with the Center for Biological Diversity, filed a lawsuit Friday against the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Florida Division of Emergency Management and Miami-Dade County. The lawsuit seeks to halt further construction at the site.
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“The site is more than 96% wetlands, surrounded by Big Cypress National Preserve, and is habitat for the endangered Florida panther and other iconic species. This scheme is not only cruel, it threatens the Everglades ecosystem that state and federal taxpayers have spent billions to protect,” Samples said in a statement.
President Donald Trump visited the controversial facility Tuesday along with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. It will have heavy-duty tents and trailers to house detained immigrants. The state of Florida said it will soon have 5,000 beds in operation there.
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On potential environmental damage to the Everglades, Trump said, “We’ll be gone a million years, and this land will still be here … I think it was a brilliant choice, and I think almost anybody in his or her right mind would say this was a brilliant choice.”
Samples said the campaigns rolled out by Florida politicians that announced the opening of “Alligator Alcatraz” ignored the environmental impacts.
DHS responded to the lawsuit, calling it “lazy,” and added that the group is ignoring that the land in question has been developed for years.
