Florida lawmakers at “Alligator Alcatraz” July 3. (Photo courtesy Rep. Michele Rayner)
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. | Five Florida lawmakers, including three of the state’s four LGBTQ+ elected officials, have sued Governor Ron DeSantis after they were denied access to “Alligator Alcatraz,” the remote immigration detention center in the Everglades.
The group argues that DeSantis overstepped his authority in blocking legislative oversight of the facility. LGBTQ+ state Senators Shevrin Jones and Carlos Guillermo Smith along with LGBTQ+ state Representative Michele Rayner and Anna V. Eskamani and Angie Nixon, longtime allies, attempted to visit the site July 3.
Rayner discussed the incident with Watermark Out News afterwards. “We’re looking at litigation and exhausting those routes because there is no legal basis in which to not allow us entry,” she said. The lawsuit was filed July 10 with the state Supreme Court, the most significant action yet by state officials seeking to challenge the DeSantis administration’s decision to construct and operate the 3,000-bed makeshift detention center at an isolated airstrip surrounded by swampland.
The lawmakers argue that DeSantis and Kevin Guthrie, the director of Florida’s emergency management division, unlawfully restricted the Legislature’s independence as a co-equal branch of government in denying them access to the facility on July 3. Under Florida law, legislators are among officials who can visit all state correctional institutions “at their pleasure.”
“The DeSantis Administration’s refusal to let us in wasn’t some bureaucratic misstep. It was a deliberate obstruction meant to hide what’s really happening behind those gates,” the lawmakers said in a joint statement. “There is no statute that permits the Governor to overrule the Legislature’s oversight authority. This lawsuit is about defending the rule of law, protecting vulnerable people inside that facility, and stopping the normalization of executive overreach.”
Since blocking the five Democratic lawmakers from entering the center earlier this month, state officials have invited Florida legislators and members of Congress to visit the site this Saturday. The plaintiffs said they expect the tour to be a “tightly controlled walkthrough” that doesn’t meet their standard of “real oversight.”
A representative for DeSantis called the lawsuit “frivolous.”
“The State is looking forward to quickly dispensing with this dumb lawsuit,” spokesperson Molly Best said in a statement.
“People resort to juvenile name-calling when they have no legal basis to defend their actions. We stand on firm legal ground: the Governor and his agency heads violated Florida law and the state Constitution by blocking legislators from performing our lawful oversight duties,” Democratic state Rep. Ashley Gantt, a lawmaker and attorney who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the petitioners, said in a statement.
State officials raced to build the facility in a matter of days at a remote airfield in the protected wetlands about 45 miles (72 kilometers) west of downtown Miami, outraging environmentalists and human rights advocates.
DeSantis’ administration built the multimillion-dollar center using emergency powers under an executive order the governor issued during the administration of then-President Joe Biden. It was signed amid what DeSantis deemed a crisis caused by illegal immigration. That emergency authority has allowed the state to sidestep purchasing requirements and seize land for the site from Miami-Dade County, over the objections of local officials.
The governor has touted the facility as a model to be replicated as the state works to aggressively carry out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda.
“Governor DeSantis has insisted that the state of Florida, under his leadership, will facilitate the federal government in enforcing immigration law,” a DeSantis spokesperson said in a previous statement.
“Florida will continue to lead on immigration enforcement.”
Rayner and other Democratic lawmakers were subsequently granted a tour July 12, decrying conditions and calling for change. She called the visit “a dog and pony show” and noted “oversight cannot be choreographed.”
