BIG CYPRESS NATIONAL PRESERVE — A federal lawsuit filed on May 27, 2025, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida alleges that the Alligator Alcatraz migrant detention site violates the Clean Air Act by operating diesel generators without a required permit. The suit contends that the Florida Division of Emergency Management unlawfully constructed the facility without obtaining the necessary Clean Air Act authorization.
The Alligator Alcatraz site, opened by the state in early July 2025, operates more than 200 diesel-burning generators and 100 diesel-burning lighting towers. These emissions include carbon monoxide and fine particulate matter, pollutants linked to cancer, asthma attacks, cardiovascular disease, and premature death. The facility is designed to accommodate 3,000 detainees, 1,000 workers, and over 400 security personnel. Located on a remote airstrip surrounded by the Big Cypress National Preserve and Miccosukee tribal lands, Alligator Alcatraz sits approximately 1,000 feet from one Miccosukee village and three miles from where tribal member Betty Osceola lives.
Osceola expressed concern about the effects of air pollution on her family, wildlife, and the endangered Florida panther. "How do you document change when you don’t have a baseline? And that opportunity was bypassed with the state rushing to do what they did," she said. "Now after the fact it’s going to be really difficult to ascertain all the impacts that this detention center has created, on site and in the surrounding area."
Ryan Maher, staff attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, stated, "The state essentially built a power plant that runs on diesel in the middle of one of America’s first national preserves, which is already fragile in terms of its ecosystem and air quality, and they did so in blatant disregard for the Clean Air Act." He added, "The pollution that we’re talking about here would be the equivalent of hundreds of diesel trucks driving around them." Maher acknowledged the "circular nature" of the civil penalty structure under the law.
The lawsuit names Kevin Guthrie, executive director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, as the sole defendant and requests that the state halt generator and lighting tower operations until a Clean Air Act permit is secured. It also seeks civil penalties of up to $124,426 per day per violation, payable to the U.S. Treasury.
U.S. Representative Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) said operations appear to be winding down. "It is very apparent operations are winding down. Staff even used terms like ‘decompressing’ and ‘winding down’ and they are currently not accepting any new detainees," Frost stated. He added, "I even saw flights taking off to transfer detainees to other detention facilities. But what stuck out the most to me, is on my past visits the processing center was full of staff and detainees and this time it was completely empty – which clearly shows this facility is no longer operating at the capacity it once did."