Friends of the Everglades Files Suit to Get Public Records on Everglades Detention Center

Friends of the Everglades filed suit today against the Florida Division of Emergency Management (FDEM) because the agency is spending millions of taxpayer dollars on a mass immigration detention center in the Everglades without disclosing financial arrangements with the federal government. The failure to disclose those records violates Florida’s Government-in-the-Sunshine Act, which requires agencies to make official records available to the public.

Friends of the Everglades, represented in this matter by Earthjustice and attorney Paul Schwiep of the Coffey Burlington law firm, has been requesting public records under Fla. Stat. Ch. 119 since June 24, 2025, about the hastily constructed Everglades detention center. In a separate federal lawsuit challenging the failure to study environmental impacts of this detention center, the Florida Division of Emergency Management claimed that there was no federal involvement that would require compliance with federal environmental law.

The Florida Division of Emergency Management commandeered property from Miami-Dade County in the Big Cypress National Preserve on June 23, 2025, and began spending hundreds of millions of public dollars to create a camp to hold people rounded up in immigration raids, which they cynically nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz.” The Florida Division of Emergency Management applied for reimbursement from the federal government more than two months ago, but did not disclose that fact during key court proceedings. A federal court on Aug. 21, 2025, halted further construction and operation of the facility until environmental reviews were done, but the Court of Appeals put that decision on hold Sept. 4, relying on the claim that Florida had not yet applied for federal funding.

“When the Court of Appeals issued its order pausing the trial court’s order halting operations at the detention center, the Court of Appeals said more than once that the Florida Department of Emergency Management had not applied for federal funding. We now know this was wrong,” said attorney Paul Schwiep of Coffey Burlington. “The Florida Division of Emergency Management wrongfully withheld the grant application documents and the grant award. These documents are public records. Friends of the Everglades, the courts, and the public are entitled to them under Florida’s constitution, which enshrines the public’s right to public records.”

As today’s suit points out, instead of complying with the government-in-the-sunshine public records law, the Florida Division of Emergency Management “has failed to (i) timely respond to these requests; (ii) produce all documents responsive to the requests when it did respond; and, most recently, (iii) ignored requests to produce the two Defendants’ grant application to the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (“FEMA”) for funding for the detention center, and the grant award documents.”

“Alligator Alcatraz was planned in secret, built in secret, and has been operated in secret — in defiance of Florida’s public records laws,” said Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades. “Government officials in Florida have misled the public they are supposed to work for, and the Everglades have been harmed as a result. We will not rest until this one-of-a-kind wilderness is protected, as required by law.”

“Floridians have a legal right to know how the state is financing major projects, especially when they are causing irreparable environmental harm,” said Tania Galloni, Managing Attorney for the Florida office of Earthjustice. “The law prevents Florida agencies from spending public dollars in secret.”

On June 27, 2025, Friends of the Everglades filed a federal lawsuit under the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) because the immigration facility was constructed without any of the environmental review required by federal law. An issue in that matter relates to federal funding for the facility.

“After a four-day evidentiary hearing conducted on August 6, 7, 12 and 13, the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida issued a preliminary injunction to wind down operations at the facility relying in part on the fact that Defendant has stated that the facility would be federally funded,” today’s lawsuit asserts. “…During the hearing, Defendant did not disclose that it had submitted a grant application for funding for to the federal government on August 7, 2025.

“…On August 26, 2025, Defendant appealed the preliminary injunction and sought a stay pending appeal. Again, Defendant did not disclose that its application for federal funding had already been submitted. The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit granted a stay of the preliminary injunction, several times citing the ‘fact’ that Defendant had not yet applied for federal funding.”

The case is continuing thought the courts. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has expedited the preliminary injunction appeal and FDEM’s brief is due October 24, 2025. As today’s lawsuit points out, Friends of the Everglades “deserves the benefit of having the public records that support its claims available without further delay.”