To Florida’s Miccosukee Tribe, the Lands Around Alligator Alcatraz Are Sacred, Pythons and All – Inside Climate News

MIAMI—Less than four miles from Alligator Alcatraz, the Everglades detention site where the Trump administration aims to incarcerate and deport thousands of undocumented migrants, is the chickee hut where Betty Osceola has lived all her life. After dark she can see the light emanating through the wilderness from the facility.

For many generations, Florida’s Miccosukee people have inhabited the soaring cypress swamps and sweeping sawgrass prairies of this remote region of the Everglades, a watershed that spans much of the peninsula and is responsible for the drinking water of thousands of Floridians. During the First and Second Seminole Wars, in the first half of the 19th century, the indigenous people were pushed deep within the watery wilderness and found sanctuary on the tree islands scattered here. For them the land is sacred, because it saved their tribe from annihilation.  

Within a three-mile radius of the detention site are 10 Miccosukee villages, including one a mere 1,000 feet from the facility. Every school morning, a bus stops at each village and picks up the children who attend classes on the main reservation some 10 miles away, returning them home in the afternoon. Federal and state officials have characterized the region as a treacherous swamp full of alligators and pythons. Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, said the site, which includes an airstrip, is a “one-stop shop” in President Donald Trump’s plans for mass deportations.

“This place, it’s my home, and I wouldn’t have any other home than the Everglades,” said Osceola, 57, whose own camp consists of five residents, including her brother. “I think the barbaric thing that is going on is what DeSantis and Trump are creating.”

The Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida have joined a lawsuit initiated by environmental groups aimed at stopping the detention site, where inmate incarcerations and flights out of the country began last month. A federal judge is scheduled Wednesday to take up the litigation during a day-long hearing in Miami.

The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Florida by Friends of the Everglades, the Center for Biological Diversity and Earthjustice, argues the facility unlawfully was rushed to completion without any public comment or environmental review. Such a review is necessary under federal laws such as the Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Policy Act, which requires that federal agencies prepare environmental impact studies on potential projects.

The groups assert the site threatens a $23 billion federal and state restoration of the Everglades, among the most ambitious efforts of its kind in human history. Judge Kathleen Williams will consider the groups’ request for a preliminary injunction, which would halt activity at the facility until an environmental impact study can be completed. The judge last week granted a Miccosukee motion to intervene in the case, giving the tribe an opportunity to voice its concerns.

“The facility’s proximity to the Tribe’s villages, sacred and ceremonial sites, traditional hunting grounds, and other lands protected by the Tribe raises significant concerns about environmental degradation and potential impacts to same caused by the construction and operation of a detention facility,” the tribe’s motion says.

“Aside from a 1974 environmental impact study that found additional airstrip infrastructure in the area would have significant negative impacts on the Everglades ecosystem, there have been no environmental impact studies conducted regarding the construction and operation of the detention facility or its effects on the environment generally.” 

A Close Bond with the Land

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier in June released a short video on social media touting the detention site, which was then only a concept, at an Everglades airstrip where a half-century ago a proposal for the world’s largest airport fell through because of environmental concerns. In the video Uthmeier boasted of the “low-cost opportunity to build a detention facility, because you don’t need to invest that much in the perimeter. People get out, there’s not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.”

The site lies at the heart of lands that are perpetually leased to the tribe and part of the Big Cypress National Preserve, the nation’s first preserve, established in 1974 to protect the river of grass after the collapse of the so-called Everglades Jetport. Historically the Miccosukee made pilgrimages to the region from north Florida to hunt, fish and hold sacred ceremonies.

“I think they’re trying to paint it as this inhabitable place where it’s like a wasteland almost, and it’s not. It’s a wonderful place. We’ve lived here for hundreds of thousands of years. We know the area. It’s sacred to us,” said Talbert Cypress, the tribe’s elected chairman.

“Most of our tribe practices the traditional culture, and so that relies heavily on the Everglades and the national preserve. That’s where we go to gather our medicines. That’s where we lay people to rest, and that’s where we have our ceremonies out there. So for us it’s a place that really just brings us together, and it’s a part of who we are.”

After the First and Second Seminole Wars the Miccosukee were relocated south to some 2.5 million acres in the region, only to face another removal attempt from the reserved lands. Eventually the indigenous people retreated to the tree islands and cypress strands of what now are the Big Cypress National Preserve and Everglades National Park. Traditional family camps and villages were displaced yet again when Everglades National Park was created in 1947. After the First and Second Seminole Wars only 195 Miccosukee remained, said Curtis Osceola, senior executive policy advisor to the chairman of the Miccosukee Tribe and no relation to Betty Osceola.

“Our whole existence dating back to time immemorial has been within the Big Cypress National Preserve,” he said. “We have a very close bond with the land because it’s what kept us alive.”

After learning of the plans for the detention center on their ancestral lands, the tribe’s leadership reached out to its lobbyists in Tallahassee and congressional and legislative representatives, but the DeSantis and Trump administrations moved swiftly to complete the detention site by the first week of July. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, during a visit with the president to celebrate the facility, said the effort took only eight days.

“We’re hearing that it’s a temporary facility, but as we’ve seen, they’re laying down pavement,” Cypress said. “It just doesn’t feel like it’s going to be a temporary facility. We think it’s going to be there for a while, unless we do something.”

The facility can hold 2,000 inmates and could be expanded for 4,000, according to the DeSantis administration. The site is constructed of tents, trailers, chain-link fence and barbed wire on an 11,000-foot airstrip that until recently had been used for aviation training. According to a separate federal class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of the detainees, they are held in tents made of white sheeting, within cages measuring 300 square feet. Each cage holds 32 prisoners. The tents are very hot during the day and cold at night. They are full of mosquitos and flood during storms, problems that will continue to intensify as the global climate warms. Frequently the toilets overflow. The only way detainees can communicate with their attorneys is via pay phone calls that are not private. Attorneys attempting to visit have been turned away.

That complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Florida by attorneys representing inmates at the site, argues the situation impinges upon the detainees’ attorney-client privilege and violates their constitutional rights. Kevin Guthrie, director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, attributed the problems during a recent media event at the facility to “technical issues” and said they would be worked out.

At the tribe’s Panther-Osceola Camp some 1,000 feet away from Alligator Alcatraz, traffic related to the site has interfered with activities such as hunting and fishing, according to the Miccosukee motion. Residents fear for their personal safety in the event of an escape. The tribe also points out the site is situated upstream from several villages, the Miccosukee Indian School, Miccosukee Health Department, Miccosukee Tribal Court, Miccosukee Water Department and Miccosukee Fire Department. The tribe raised concerns about drinking water contamination and impacts on hunting and fishing, which residents rely on as part of their diets. Some 450 people live on the reservation and another 100 live in the tribal villages.

Curtis Osceola said the Miccosukee want the environmental impact study because it would force the Trump and DeSantis administrations to consult on the detention site with the tribe, a federally recognized sovereign nation. No one from either administration reached out to the tribe in advance of publicizing the plans in the media, he said. To him the language federal and state officials are using to describe the region harkens back to the 1800s, when early settlers viewed the Everglades as a worthless swamp and campaigned to drain and develop the vast watershed.

“Our people have been here since before colonization. For us we sort of have to live in this world where we’re surrounded by people who came from somewhere else,” he said. “It is ironic that there are laws being enforced that are trying to keep certain people out.”

“We Just Want to be Heard”

Betty Osceola recalls her upbringing in the Everglades fondly. She remembers walking barefoot with her four brothers and sister to a rock pit excavated during the construction of the airstrip. Here the marsh is peaceful, quiet aside from the sounds of the rippling knee-deep water and occasional alligator bellow. The children would swim in the rock pit. Sometimes they would spear fish in the nearby marshes. Eventually her brothers learned to hunt with a .22-caliber rifle and would bring home a deer or ibis or great blue heron for dinner.

“My mom always said we have to keep our identity and as much as possible, be who we are and pass those traditions down or it’s going to be lost,” she said. “Once you lose it you’re not going to get it back.”

Since hearing about Alligator Alcatraz she has spent a lot of time outside the facility taking pictures and documenting the activities of the government agencies and construction contractors as the environmental groups and tribe have pursued their litigation. She also has participated in events outside the site alongside conservationists and citizens opposed to the detention site.

The environmental groups’ litigation names as defendants, in addition to Noem and Guthrie, Todd Lyons, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Miami-Dade County, which owns the property. The federal agencies have pointed out, in statements to Inside Climate News, that the property already was developed before construction on the site began. Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava shared the concerns of the environmental groups, expressing “outrage” over the state takeover of the locally owned site.

The DeSantis administration took control of the property in June under an executive order he issued in 2023 declaring a state of emergency over immigration. The governor has downplayed environmental concerns over the detention site, pointing to the billions of dollars his administration has invested in Everglades restoration. He and other Republicans have characterized the federal judge overseeing the case as an “activist” after Williams found Uthmeier in contempt for ignoring her orders in another immigration-related case.

Cypress said the tribe filed its motion as a last resort. He said the Trump and DeSantis administrations’ actions over the detention site have been disappointing.

“The work that the DeSantis and Trump administrations have done for the Everglades has been very significant. They have allocated a lot of funds, and to see them do this basically flies in the face of all of that,” he said. “We’re just taking five steps backward with Everglades restoration.”

He added: “We just want to be heard on this situation, and not being heard is what really bothers us I think as a community.”

Alligator Alcatraz is the latest environmental issue the Miccosukee have taken up. After the federal government sued the state in the 1980s over water pollution in the river of grass, the tribe got involved in the issue as defenders of the Everglades. That litigation led to a monumental state cleanup effort that continues today. 

More recently the tribe has pursued a deal to phase out oil drilling within the Big Cypress National Preserve. The Everglades begin in central Florida with the headwaters of the Kissimmee River and encompass Lake Okeechobee, sawgrass marshes to the south and Florida Bay, at the peninsula’s southernmost tip. Rising global temperatures associated with fossil fuel emissions represent yet another threat to the fragile watershed.

For her part, Betty Osceola has noticed the water quality where she lives has grown murkier, and the once-robust wildlife populations have thinned. A panther she was familiar with no longer wanders through her camp. The chickee hut where she raised her two children now has enclosed walls, electricity and air conditioning. Her Everglades are changing, but she takes issue with how the Trump and DeSantis administrations have described her homelands.

“There is beauty there. There is a landscape that is trying to thrive. It’s a landscape that is very healing. A landscape that without our existence would probably cease to exist,” she said of the Miccosukee. “So there is a lot of magnificence there if you open your eyes to it.”