Video: Detainees talk about the terms of Wannial Catraz.
TALHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Five state lawmakers denied access to the new immigration detention center built by Gov. Ron DeSantis’s administration in the Florida Everglades, have sued the governor and claimed they stomped authority by blocking legislative oversight of a facility known as the “Alligator Alcatraz.”
Thursday’s filing with the state Supreme Court is the most important lawsuit by state officials seeking to challenge the DeSantis administration’s decision to build and operate a makeshift detention center on an isolated runway surrounded by Swamplands.
Denied Access: Legislators were denied and subsequently invited to Tour Wannial Catraz
Lawmakers allege that Florida’s directors of emergency management, DeSantis and Kevin Guthrie, illegally restricted the independence of Congress as a joint branch of the government when denied access to the facility on July 3.
“It was not a bureaucratic failure for the Desantis administration to try and put us in. It was a deliberate obstruction intended to hide what was actually happening behind those gates,” the lawmaker said in a joint statement. “There is no law that allows the governor to dismiss the council’s oversight authority. The case is to defend the rule of law, protect vulnerable people within the facility, and stop the normalization of over-enforcement.”
Since blocked five Democrats from entering the center earlier this month, state officials have invited Florida legislators and members of the Congress to visit the site this Saturday. The plaintiff said he expects the tour to be a “strictly controlled walkthrough” that does not meet the “actual surveillance” standards.
Representatives of Desantis called the lawsuit “frivolous.”
“The state looks forward to quickly distributing this stupid lawsuit,” spokesman Molly said in a statement.
“People rely on calling the boy’s name if they don’t have a legal basis to protect their actions. We stand on a solid legal basis. The governor and his agency manager violated Florida law and the state constitution.
State officials have angered environmentalists and human rights advocates in a few days at a remote airfield in a protected west of downtown Miami, competing to build the facility in just a few days.
The DeSantis administration used emergency to build a multi-million-dollar center under an executive order issued by the governor during then-President Joe Biden’s administration. It was signed in what DeSantis deemed a crisis caused by illegal immigration. The emergency department allowed the state to avoid the requirement to purchase the site from Miami-Dade County and take the land away from objections from local officials.
The governor touted the state as a model for replicating facilities as it works to actively implement President Donald Trump’s deportation agenda.
“Governor DeSantis has argued that Florida, under his leadership, will promote the federal government in enforcing immigration laws,” a spokesperson for DeSantis said in a previous statement.
“Florida continues to lead immigration enforcement.”
___
Kate Payne is a legion of the Associated Press/America Statehouse News Initiative report. Report for America is a non-profit, national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on infiltrated issues.
