Attorney Elise Bennett, Center for Biological Diversity
On Wednesday, September 3, attorney Elise Bennett from the Center for Biological Diversity and Eve Samples, Executive Director of the Friends of the Everglades, joined us on MidPoint to discuss their successful court case against Kristi Noem and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the State of Florida. These environmental advocates, together with the Miccosukee Tribe of Florida, obtained a preliminary injunction in U.S. District Court in Miami that orders the defendants to close the Everglades Detention Camp, aka the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, aka Alligator Alcatraz, for failing to comply with federal environmental laws that required an environmental impact study and public notice and input before the site could be modified, expanded and used as a detention camp.
The 82-page court order analyzed testimony from numerous witnesses about the ecological damage to the site caused by the construction, lighting, and fencing added for the detention camp, and the risks posed to the habitats of some endangered species, as well as to the areas adjacent to the site occupied by the Miccosuke Tribe. The court found that the state and federal defendants completely failed to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to assess the environmental impacts of the detention camp, and until they so complied, all operations at the site must cease, and it must be returned to its previous state.
“No new detainees can be brought to the site, and that is to facilitate the wind down of the really harmful activities. So that is the artificial lighting which is impacting endangered Florida panthers and Florida Bonnetted bats, and also to take all of the potential contaminants off the site, jet fuel, human waste, so that there’s not this risk to these world-class wetlands that are in our Everglades and in Big Cypress National Preserve,” Bennett told WMNF.
Eve Samples is the president of Friends of the Everglades,
“There’s some painful irony in these projects being rolled out under the guise of law and order, because the state and federal government have violated the law, the National Environmental Policy Act, in doing them. So, so real irony to chew on there,” Samples said.
Samples said the state has 60 days to dismantle the facility. The defendants have appealed this order and asked the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals for a stay of the order. The plaintiffs have responded, and a decision is anticipated to come soon.
You can listen to the entire show here, on the WMNF app, or as a WMNF MidPoint podcast on Spotify or Apple Music.