Authored by Troy Myers via The Epoch Times,
A federal appeals court on Tuesday pulled a judge’s previous order to dismantle the high-profile detention center in the Florida Everglades for illegal immigrants, known as “Alligator Alcatraz.”
In a 2–1 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit sided with the Trump administration’s argument that there was minimal federal involvement in the facility’s construction, so a federal environmental review was not warranted.
“Using state employees and state funds, Florida officials, on their own initiative, constructed a detention center at an airport on state property in the Florida Everglades,”court documents showed.
Two environmental groups, Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity, joined the Miccosukee Tribe, which has villages close to the facility, in challenging construction of Alligator Alcatraz.
The groups accused state and federal officials of rushing to build the facility and failing to conduct an environmental review as required under the National Environmental Policy Act.
That federal law, passed in 1970, requires federal agencies to evaluate environmental impacts of proposed major construction.
Construction began last year on the facility, located at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport in the Everglades, to assist with the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement and detainment of illegal aliens.
A lower court in Augustsidedwith the environmental groups and the Miccosukee Tribe, ordering officials to halt construction and even undo some work that had already been finished. But the higher court’s Tuesday order lifted that.
Federal authorities inspected the site for compliance with federal standards, court documents said, but this wasn’t enough to trigger a federally mandated environmental review.
Source: ZeroHedge News
