The 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a split opinion that President Donald Trump’s administration is likely to prevail in a legal battle with environmental groups who say the facility is endangering the Everglades and its wildlife. Two judges sided with the Trump administration, and one judge dissented.
The majority ruled that the project – which has been funded by the state of Florida – did not trigger the kind of environmental review needed for federally funded construction projects.
Although both Florida governor Ron DeSantis and homeland security secretary Kristi Noem have said the federal government will pay for expanding the detention facility, there is no evidence that federal funds have been used for construction, the court ruled.
DeSantis said in a video posted to social media on Thursday that the detention facility was “open for business” and ready to support Trump’s immigration enforcement efforts.
The US department of homeland security called the ruling a “huge victory” in a social media post.
“This lawsuit was never about the environmental impacts of turning a developed airport into a detention facility,” DHS said. “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.”
One of the environmental groups behind the lawsuit, Friends of the Everglades, said on its website that the detention centre was hastily constructed and threatened environmental harm to a vital stretch of protected American wilderness.
The facility is located 60km west of Miami in a vast subtropical wetland that is home to alligators, crocodiles and pythons – imagery that the White House leveraged to show its determination to remove migrants it says were wrongly allowed to stay in the US under former President Joe Biden.
The detention centre cost about US$250 million to build, and covers over 18 acres (seven hectares) at a site that was formerly used as a “small but bustling working airport” in Miami-Dade County and Collier County, according to court documents.
The reconstructed site could house thousands of detainees and has been used to detain 900 migrants so far, according to the environmental groups’ lawsuit.
Two environmental groups filed a legal motion in June seeking to block further construction at the detention site, saying it violated federal, state, and local environmental laws.
Trump, who has toured the site, has dismissed the environmental concerns, saying the detention facility was a template for what he would like to do nationwide.
The Republican president, who has a home in Florida, has for a decade made aggressive immigration and border policies central to his political agenda.