Amnesty International USA blasted a federal appeals court ruling to keep Alligator Alcatraz open, saying the controversial immigration detention center is a "a human rights disaster."
“This ruling is a setback for human rights," said Amy Fischer, Amnesty International USA’s Director for Refugee and Migrant Rights, in a statement issue Friday morning.
"Alligator Alcatraz is a monument to cruelty and just one of the latest expansions of the Trump administration’s racist, anti-immigrant agenda," she said.
Amnesty International has strongly pushed to shut down the facility in the middle of the Everglades.
READ MORE: Appeals court panel stops order to wind down operations at 'Alligator Alcatraz' in Everglades
A three-judge panel in Atlanta on Thursday, in a 2-1 vote, put on hold a lower court judge’s order to end operations indefinitely at the immigration detention center. The panel said it was in the public interest to stay the federal judge’s order pending the outcome of an appeal. The ruling allows the facility to continue holding detainees for the time being.
The original lawsuit was brought by Friends of the Everglades, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Miccosukee Tribe, who accused the state and federal defendants of not following federal law requiring an environmental review for the detention center in the middle of sensitive wetlands.
“Beyond the environmental concerns brought in the lawsuit, this facility, carried out in coordination with the state of Florida, is a human rights disaster," said Amnesty International USA's Fischer.
"the people who have been caged there have gone through hell," she said. "Within weeks of starting to detain people, horror stories emerged about dangerous and inhumane conditions including maggot-infested food, overflowing toilets and no working showers, lack of medical care, and virtually no access to lawyers."
"These conditions are not isolated failures — they are part and parcel of the system designed for cruelty and meant to dehumanize our immigrant friends and neighbors."
“Like the rest of President Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda, expanding immigrant detention centers is a solution in search of a problem," she said. "These facilities are as expensive as they are cruel, and do absolutely nothing to keep our communities safe."
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration in late June raced to build the facility on an isolated airstrip surrounded by wetlands to aid President Donald Trump’s efforts to deport people in the U.S. illegally. The governor said the location in the rugged and remote Everglades was meant as a deterrent against escape, much like the island prison in California that Republicans named it after.
Trump toured the facility in July and suggested it could be a model for future lockups nationwide as his administration pushes to expand the infrastructure needed to increase deportations.
DeSantis said on social media Thursday, after the appellate panel issued its ruling, that claims that the facility's shutdown were imminent were false.
“We said we would fight that. We said the mission would continue,” DeSantis said. “So Alligator Alcatraz is in fact, like we've always said, open for business.”
The Department of Homeland Security called Thursday's ruling “a win for the American people, the rule of law and common sense.”
“This lawsuit was never about the environmental impacts of turning a developed airport into a detention facility,” DHS said in a statement. "It has and will always be about open-borders activists and judges trying to keep law enforcement from removing dangerous criminal aliens from our communities, full stop.”
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
