A federal judge on Wednesday allowed the Miccosukee Tribe to join a lawsuit filed by environmental groups challenging an immigrant-detention center in the Everglades, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.”
The lawsuit, filed by Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity, alleges that state and federal officials did not comply with a law requiring that an environmental-impact study be performed before developing the remote facility.
The Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida on July 14 filed a motion seeking to intervene in the lawsuit over the detention center, which is surrounded by the Big Cypress National Preserve.
The tribe’s intervention request said the “Miccosukee people have lived in and cared for the land now known as the Big Cypress National Preserve since time immemorial” and raised environmental concerns. U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams issued an order allowing the tribe to join the lawsuit after holding a hearing on the issue Wednesday.
“We welcome the valuable perspective of the Miccosukee Tribe, which is on the front lines of the damage this mass detention center poses to the Everglades,” Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades, said in a statement.
Attorneys for state Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie, who is a defendant in the lawsuit, filed a motion Friday opposing the Miccosukees’ effort. In part, the state’s lawyers argued that the tribe’s participation would be “duplicative” of arguments by the environmental groups and would “inject into the case additional briefing and discovery that would seriously burden the existing parties and the court.”
Federal officials on Friday said they did not take a position on the tribe’s intervention.
The Miccosukee’s motion said the detention center’s “proximity to the tribe’s villages, sacred and ceremonial sites, traditional hunting grounds, and other lands protected by the tribe raises significant concerns about environmental degradation and potential impacts to the same caused by the construction and operation of a detention facility” at the site.
Williams is slated to hold an Aug. 6 hearing to consider the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction requiring an impact study to be performed.
