Attorney General Marshall and Coalition File Brief in Support of Florida’s ‘Alligator Alcatraz’
(Montgomery, Ala) – Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall filed an amicus brief in support of the State of Florida in its challenge to a federal court order that would require the State to dismantle the critically necessary detention facility known as “Alligator Alcatraz.” The 22-state brief, filed in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, urges the court to stay the lower court’s wrongly issued preliminary injunction.
“Florida, and our law enforcement community, urgently need this critical detention facility to house the most dangerous illegal immigrants. In a shocking decision, a district court judge declared that states must comply with federal environmental reporting requirements that apply only to the federal government. Worse, the court ordered Florida to halt further construction of the facility and tear it down,” stated Attorney General Marshall. “But Congress did not give federal courts the authority to intrude on these issues of law and order. The States’ authority to ensure public safety must not be held hostage to judicial overreach.”
The brief argues the district court erroneously held that because the federal government has worked with Florida on this state project built on state land with state money, federal laws imposing procedural requirements on federal agencies apply. And then based on that faulty reasoning, the court ordered the State of Florida to stop building a facility on state land and ordered Florida to remove fencing, lights, and generators it installed. The attorneys general contend that the National Environmental Policy Act does not impose such obligations on States.
Alabama joined the Indiana-led brief which also includes attorneys general from: Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
