MIAMI — Environmental groups urged a federal appeals court on Monday to reconsider its ruling that temporarily halted a lawsuit accusing the Trump and DeSantis administrations of failing to follow environmental regulations in their haste to build the Alligator Alcatraz immigration detention center in the Everglades.

Last week, a panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals paused a Miami federal judge’s preliminary injunction that would have shut down operations at the controversial detention center. In a rare move, the panel in Atlanta also voted 2-1 to stop the environmental groups’ case from proceeding in Miami federal court until the appeals court rules on the merits of the state’s request to lift the judge’s injunction.

Lawyers representing the environmental groups, along with the Miccosukee Tribe, said the appellate court’s decision to put the entire case on hold was based on a single-sentence request from the state, calling its ruling “overboard,” “unnecessary” and “prejudicial.” The federal government did not weigh in on pausing the case.

“Florida’s one-sentence request to stay all proceedings was not supported by any legal authority,” a team of lawyers wrote in their filing. “Florida’s request to halt the litigation in its entirety is unnecessary and prejudicial.”

In its narrow vote last week, the appeals panel found that U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams had misinterpreted a federal law requiring a review of potential environmental harms before a major project could be built in the ecologically fragile Everglades. The panel found that because the state of Florida — in an agreement with the Trump Administration — was funding, building and operating the detention center, the National Environmental Policy Act would not apply. In a parallel vote, the panel also granted Florida’s request to pause “the underlying case itself pending appeal.”

Lawyers for the plaintiffs said the panel’s ruling could stall legal proceedings on the case unrelated to the judge’s injunction on the NEPA matter and allow the detention center to operate for months, possibly a year, without any legal scrutiny in the federal district court.

In the filing, the lawyers said they’re not challenging the appellate panel’s decision to pause Williams’ preliminary injunction, which the judge had issued last month. Instead, they argued that stopping the case in its entirety was superfluous and requested that the appellate court allow the district court case to move forward.

The panel’s majority ruling, written by Judges Barbara Lagoa and Elizabeth Branch, both appointed to the bench by President Donald Trump, agreed with the DeSantis administration’s argument: the state is not subject to the National Environmental Protection Act and shutting down the controversial site would impede its ability to carry out immigration enforcement. The third judge on the panel, Adalberto Jordan, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, sided with Williams in his dissent.

Miami attorney Joseph DeMaria, a federal litigator who once worked in the Justice Department’s organized crime task force in South Florida, said the environmental plaintiffs have a strong argument challenging the appeals court’s ruling that halted the Alligator Alcatraz case.

DeMaria explained that the majority’s willingness to stay the entire case goes even further than the U.S. Supreme Court has ordered in its cases staying injunctions that restrict immigration enforcement actions of the Trump Administration.

“The majority, without applying the appropriate legal factors, put a stop to the entire litigation,” DeMaria said. “This detention center can now be operated without any judicial protection of the Everglades or the rights of the Native Americans.”

In every case where the Supreme Court has stayed injunctions that restrict the Trump Administration, the high court otherwise allowed the litigation to proceed in the lower courts, DeMaria said. In a similar case in California challenging the Trump administration’s use of the National Guard in Los Angeles, the federal appeals court sided with the government and paused a preliminary injunction granted by a district judge but allowed the underlying case to proceed to trial.

Last week’s appellate court ruling was a victory for the DeSantis administration, which has praised operations of the makeshift detention facility as a major milestone in the state’s crackdown on illegal immigration – in sync with the Trump administration’s mass deportation mandate.

Environmental groups and the Miccosukee tribe had sued the state and federal government for sidestepping federal environmental regulations when erecting the site in an airstrip in Big Cypress National Preserve. They argued the temporary facility was causing irreparable damage to the surrounding wetlands.

The state and federal governments have continued to deny those claims.

“This lawsuit is not about the environmental impacts of turning a developed airport into a detention facility,” said Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs for the Department of Homeland Security. “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.”

In a Sunday interview with Local News 10, Kevin Guthrie, the executive director for the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said one of the reasons the site had been chosen was that “it was in nobody’s backyard” and the airport already saw high activity from flights.

“The highest amount of planes that would land on that runway in a given day was 155,” Guthrie said.

New detainees are being bused in

The state and federal governments had already begun winding down operations at the site after Williams issued her injunction order on Aug. 21. However, days after the injunction order was lifted by the appellate court, vans, buses and heavy-duty trucks could be observed entering the facility.

Betty Osceola, a Miccosukee tribal member and a vocal critic of Alligator Alcatraz, said she and other members of a prayer vigil held outside the facility on Sunday noticed state officials trucking in new materials — including an elevated watch tower — and buses of detainees.

On Sunday alone, Osceola told the Herald, they counted three buses headed into the facility. Two the size of school buses and a small charter bus. The two that entered the camp during the day had tinted windows, so protestors were unable to see inside.

But on the bus that entered later that night, around 11 p.m., the silhouettes of many passengers were visible to people on the road.

Osceola said she and other activists have also noticed border patrol vehicles entering and exiting the camp.

“It’s important that there’s individuals out there bearing witness and documenting what’s occurring so the litigants have that information,” she said.

It is not clear how many detainees are currently being held at the facility.

The Florida Division of Emergency Management referred the Herald to a Fox News report when asked about how many detainees were currently housed at the facility and if they had transferred new detainees since the appellate court’s decision.

The appeals court case is one of four legal battles challenging the state’s authority to hold detainees at the facility. In two cases in the Middle District of Florida, civil rights groups sued the state and federal governments for not providing detainees with confidential access to their attorneys. They also questioned the state’s agreement with the federal government that authorizes it to hold detainees at the site.

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Miami Herald staff writer Alex Harris contributed to this report.

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