Alligator Alcatraz

Environmental groups say the expected closure of a detention center in the Florida Everglades is linked to their lawsuit. The center, nicknamed "Alligator Alcatraz," could close in the next month or two. A federal appellate court recently allowed it to remain open but sent the case back to a lower court.

Vendors working for the controversial immigration detention facility in the Everglades were reportedly told that it would shut down next month, according to the New York Times and CBS News.

In total, FDEM has spent $458.5 million in emergency funds on illegal immigration enforcement in the past year.

The newspaper reports that Florida officials are in preliminary conversations with the Trump administration to shut down the facility, after the Department of Homeland Security concluded the center is too expensive to operate.

Florida officials are fighting a court order to expand detainee phone access at the so-called “Alligator Alcatraz” center, arguing it would be too costly for taxpayers — but they’ve already spent roughly $34 million in public dollars on technology, IT support, and more, state records show.

A majority on the three-judge panel from the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals said the Florida-run facility wasn't under federal control and didn't need to comply with federal law requiring an environmental impact review.

A lawyer for two of the detainees says the beating happened after they complained about not having phone access on April 2. The lawyer says the guards taunted and then attacked the detainees. Guards punched one of her clients in the face and broke another detainee's wrist. Phone service was restored the next day without explanation.

"To be housing ICE detainees in a detention camp in the middle of the Everglades … without making sure that they have enough access to nutritious food and the ability to sleep and have access to counsel — everything about this screams inhumane and unnecessary," U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, told reporters.

A federal court heard oral arguments today in an appeal that could decide whether operations at Alligator Alcatraz continue or take an indefinite pause.

A man recently released from Alligator Alcatraz said conditions at the immigrant detention center are tortuous and inhumane, and a waste of taxpayer resources.

In the first seven months of President Donald Trump's second term, authorities arrested and detained parents of at least 11,000 U.S. citizen children — a number that, if the pace held up, will have roughly doubled by now. That’s an average of more than 50 U.S. citizen kids a day with a parent pulled into detention.

Florida is finally eligible for a $608 million federal grant to help pay for the state’s migrant lockups after the Trump administration lifted an environmental funding hold that had stalled the dollars for months.