ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — A U.S. government attorney says detainees at the Florida Everglades immigration detention center known as “Alligator Alcatraz” may include people who have never been part of the removal procedure.
U.S. Department of Justice attorneys have made their admission to a court filing that argued that detainees at Everglades wilderness facilities are not as common enough to be recognized as a class of litigation regarding whether or not they have adequate access to the attorney.
The elimination procedure is a legal process initiated by the US Department of Homeland Security and determines whether someone should be deported from the US.
The DOJ lawyer wrote that detainees at Everglades facilities have too many different immigration statuses to be considered a class.
“The proposed class will include all detainees from Alligator Alcatraz, a facility that houses detainees at every stage of the immigration process, including those who have never been to the removal procedure, those who are already subject to the final order of removal, those who are subject to the removal, and those who refrain from the purpose of removing the final order.
Since the facility was opened, DeSantis publicly says it has gone through a process in which each detainee has decided that he cannot legally be in the United States.
At a press conference outside the detention center on July 25, Desantis said “everyone here has already received a final deletion order.”
“They are ordered to be removed from the country,” he added.
In a July 29 speech before the Florida Sheriff’s Association meeting, the Republican governor said, “People who go to Alligator Alcatraz are illegal in the country. They have already been given a final removal order.”
He said, “So, if you have an order to delete it, what is the possibility of opposing the federal government enforcing that order?”
Desantis’ press did not respond to an email seeking comment Monday morning.
The court filing by DOJ’s lawyers came in a lawsuit in which civil rights groups alleged that the detainees at the facility were denied proper access in violation of their constitutional rights. Civil rights groups on Thursday called for a preliminary injunction from federal judges at Fort Myers that would establish stronger protections for detainees to meet with their lawyers personally and share confidential documents.
The court case is one of three cases filed by environmental and civil rights groups with the Detention Center, which was quickly built by the state of Florida this summer and is run by private contractors and state agencies.
A federal judge in Miami ordered the facility to close operations within two months in August, agreeing to the environmental group and that remote runway sites were not given proper environmental reviews before being converted to immigration detention centers. However, the operation continued after the judge’s interim injunction was put on hold by a panel of the Court of Appeals in early September. At one point, the facility had more than 900 detainees, most of which were transferred after the initial injunction. It was not clear how many detainees were in the centre, which was built to accommodate 3,000 people on Monday.
President Donald Trump toured the facility in July, suggesting that it could be a model for future lockups abroad. Federal officials on Friday confirmed that Florida has been approved to reimburse $688 million for the costs of building and operating the immigration detention center.
