M.A. v. Guthrie

Immigrants’ rights advocates filed a federal lawsuit challenging Florida’s authority to detain people at the notorious “Alligator Alcatraz” detention center, a hastily constructed immigration detention facility in the middle of the Everglades, which is surrounded by alligators, snakes, mosquitos, and swampland at risk of dangerous flooding. The case focuses on the state’s unprecedented assertion of authority to operate an immigration detention center pursuant to several 287(g) agreements, despite how 287(g) agreements do not confer such authority.

The state’s chaotic and cruel operations, void of federal oversight, have resulted in unprecedented challenges that people in immigration detention typically do not face, including being held without charge, not receiving initial custody or bond determinations, not appearing in the detainee locator system, and not being able to access their attorneys or immigration court. Physical conditions at the facility are atrocious and dangerous. Detainees are going “off the grid” and being taken out of the normal systems for immigration detention and removal proceedings. Congress required the Department of Homeland Security to maintain custody of immigration detainees, and it imposed tight limits on the 287(g) program, precisely to avoid these kinds of problems.

The 287(g) program allows certain individual state and local officers to help with a narrow set of immigration enforcement tasks, subject to rigorous training and close supervision by federal officials. It does not allow them to set up their own independent detention operations. And it does not let state officers sub-delegate immigration authority to private contractors who do not and cannot participate in the 287(g) program. Florida officers are also acting without adequate training in the many complex facets of immigration law. Many are only spending a few hours online, compared to equivalent federal officers who receive multiple weeks of in-person training.

This class-action case was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Florida, Community Justice Project, and National Immigrant Justice Center on behalf of people detained at the Everglades facility.

The Latest: On December 18, 2025, the court denied a preliminary injunction without reaching the question of whether the facility is authorized by 287(g). On January 12, 2026, we voluntarily dismissed the case.