Florida lawmakers who were denied access to Alligator Alcatraz file lawsuit

Orlando Sentinel: Florida lawmakers who were denied access to Alligator Alcatraz file lawsuit

This article was written by Florida News Service and Angie DiMichelle and published by the Orlando Sentinel on July 11, 2025

Five Florida Democratic legislators who were denied access to the Alligator Alcatraz immigrant detention center in the Everglades last week when they attempted an unannounced inspection have filed a lawsuit in the Florida Supreme Court.

The lawsuit was filed Thursday by state Reps. Anna Eskamani, Angie Nixon and Michele Rayner and state Sens. Shevrin Jones and Carlos Guillermo Smith. It requests that they “immediately” be allowed “statutorily sanctioned unannounced access” to the facility. They argue that being denied access on July 3 was a violation of a state law that allows members of the Legislature to inspect all state correctional facilities “at their pleasure.”

The lawsuit comes a few days before the five senators and representatives plan to attend a 90-minute tour of the facility at the invitation of the Florida Department of Emergency Management, according to a news release announcing the lawsuit Thursday. In the news release, the tour scheduled for Saturday was called “staged, scripted, and sanitized.”

While an active state of emergency order grants the governor “broad powers,” the lawsuit argues that Gov. Ron DeSantis and Kevin Guthrie, executive director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, exceeded their authority in denying their visit.

“The rule of law must be upheld. Our Constitution does not coronate a king,” the lawsuit said.

Molly Best, a spokesperson for the governor’s office, in an emailed statement Thursday called the lawsuit “frivolous.”

“Yesterday, the Florida Division of Emergency Management invited all Florida legislators to tour Alligator Alcatraz this weekend,” Best said. “Today, five Democrat legislators responded by filing a frivolous lawsuit demanding access to Alligator Alcatraz. The State is looking forward to quickly dispensing with this dumb lawsuit.”

The Florida Division of Emergency Management on Wednesday sent an email inviting “congressional and state legislators” to tour the detention center, which state officials hurriedly erected as part of an effort to help President Donald Trump’s deportation of undocumented immigrants.

An email from the division said the tour is restricted to “Florida’s state legislators and members of Congress.”

“While the five Florida lawmakers plan to attend, they made clear that a pre-arranged, tightly controlled walkthrough does not meet the standard, or legality, of real oversight,” the news release announcing the lawsuit Thursday said.

The detention center reportedly can house up to 3,000 detainees and is located at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, a remote site used for flight training.

Lawmakers seeking to tour the facility have until noon Friday to respond to the invitation.

When the legislators arrived on July 3 to inspect the detention center, “it was heavily reported that the facility was flooding due to recent rains and the swift construction,” the lawsuit said, and they had no further information about the conditions inside.

The lawmakers were told by multiple state employees that that they could not go inside because of “safety concerns,” the lawsuit said, which “were never identified” to them. They left after repeatedly being denied, despite citing the state statute that they argue allowed them to enter, the lawsuit says.

“We’re glad to see public pressure forcing the state of Florida to open its doors for a scheduled tour of the Everglades detention center. But let’s be clear: this isn’t a field trip — it’s oversight. The law grants us the right to enter these facilities unannounced, at any time. A scheduled 90-minute tour is not a substitute for lawful access and long-term legislative accountability,” Eskamani said in a statement Wednesday.

Democratic U.S. House members Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Lois Frankel, Darren Soto, Maxwell Frost and Jared Moskowitz said they already were planning “an unannounced oversight visit” to the facility on Saturday.

“We do not need permission to conduct lawful oversight. This sanitized tour is not real oversight,” the Democrats said in a statement Wednesday. The group pointed to “reports of horrific living conditions, rampant denial of due process, the risk of death and destruction from a hurricane, plus irreversible damage to the Everglades and tribal lands.”

But the Democrats said they intend to participate in the tour to inspect the facility and speak with detainees and security workers.

Republicans have touted the facility, with state Attorney General James Uthmeier, in a social-media post this week, calling it a “one-stop-shop deportation center.”