Lawyers question legality of Alligator Alcatraz, ask federal judge to intervene

Ana Ceballos and Siena Duncan, Miami Herald on Jul 26, 2025

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A federal judge in Miami is expected to hear arguments Monday from attorneys who say the Trump and DeSantis administrations are holding detainees at Alligator Alcatraz without charges and without access to immigration courts in violation of their constitutional rights.

Questioning the very legality of the state-run detention center, the attorneys said in a legal filing Friday that immigrants held at the site are unable to challenge their detention because there is no federal immigration court overseeing their cases – even though the complex of tents and trailers has been operating for nearly a month.

The plaintiffs, which include the American Civil Rights Union Foundation and Americans for Immigrant Justice, said judges at Krome Immigration Court in Miami are canceling court hearings because the court does not have jurisdiction over detainees at Alligator Alcatraz. They said ICE officers are also saying they aren’t responsible for detainees at the facility, which the DeSantis administration erected in eight days on a remote airfield in the Everglades.

“This is an unprecedented situation where hundreds of detainees are held incommunicado, with no ability to access the courts, under legal authority that has never been explained and may not exist,” they argued.

The outcome of Monday’s hearing before District Judge Rodolfo A. Ruiz II could shed light on a question that attorneys have been asking since the Trump administration began sending immigrant detainees to Florida’s pop-up detention center on July 2: Who is in charge of detainees and their cases? The answer to that question could have wide-ranging implications as the Trump administration tries to replicate Alligator Alcatraz in other parts of the country.

The plaintiffs are asking Ruiz II to force the Department of Homeland Security to identify an immigration court that has jurisdiction over detainees and to produce any agreements that explain and prove the Trump and DeSantis administrations’ legal authority to hold immigrant detainees at the facility.

“Florida cannot operate an independent immigration detention system without federal supervision,” they wrote. “It cannot hold people without charge and without access to immigration courts.”

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.

The Florida Division of Emergency Management, which has said it will offer on-site legal services to detainees for the first time on Monday, could not be immediately reached for comment.

Attorneys made their case for a court intervention on the same day that Gov. Ron DeSantis announced the federal government had begun flying hundreds of immigrant detainees out of the detention camp to be deported

“Clarity on these questions is urgently needed,” plaintiffs wrote in a court filing.

One attorney, Anna Weiser of Smith and Eulo Law Firm, said a Krome Immigration Court judge canceled a bond hearing for her clients, Hari Koneru and Gonzalo Valdez, both of whom entered the United States on valid visas.

When she asked for a reason, she was told the court did not have jurisdiction, and to contact DHS for more information. She said the ICE office of Chief Counsel in Miami instructed her to email the Alligator Alcatraz facility directly. She did, but there was no response.

“We are in limbo status,” Weiser said in an interview with the Herald/Times. “We’re running around in circles … It’s designed, in my personal opinion, to delay and to stall and to wear them out until they’re begging to leave.”

The Herald/Times verified that one of her clients, Koneru, has been flown out of Alligator Alcatraz. He is in an ICE staging facility in Louisiana. DeSantis said detainees who have been transferred to another facility are en route to being deported.

Another attorney, Zareefa Khan, has faced similar struggles with legal access.

She filed a bond hearing on behalf of a Guatemalan man with no criminal history and a pending asylum case. The client, who is identified in the lawsuit as G.T.C., ended up at Alligator Alcatraz after Florida Fish and Wildlife officers stopped him while he was fishing in the Everglades.

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officers detained him even though he showed officers a copy of his pending asylum form that shows that he is already in immigration proceedings and should not be detained, court records show.

Khan filed a bond motion on his behalf and he was set for a hearing on July 24. But the meeting did not happen. Khan was later told that the immigration court had “no jurisdiction over cases of people held at Alligator Alcatraz,” and that G.T.C. “was in state, not federal custody.”

“I do not understand what the basis of their custody is at Alligator Alcatraz,” Khan wrote in a signed declaration, under penalty of perjury, “if ICE is stating that they are not in federal immigration custody, and if their cases cannot be adjudicated by the federal immigration court.”