In the height of the 2025 hurricane season, an immigration detention center opened in the heart of the Everglades and Big Cypress National Preserve. State officials nicknamed the facility "Alligator Alcatraz."
Environmental groups like the Center for Biological Diversity and Friends of the Everglades filed suit in federal court before it opened, aiming to halt operations.
ALSO READ: How a detention center awoke a decades-old environmental fight
In late June, officials relocated detainees housed there, took down the large white tents, and removed generators — effectively shutting it down.
Lead attorney for the Center, Elise Bennett, has been arguing the case since last year. After an order to close it down, a reversal of that decision and back-and-forth with an appellate panel, the case will soon return to U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams in Miami.
Attorneys filed an amended lawsuit Aug. 12 to update evidence they'd gotten in the past year. It was ahead of a court hearing with the judge and attorneys involved in the case.
"The most important facts have not changed, and the important facts are that no National Environmental Policy Act analysis has been done," Bennett said. "No formal consultation process with a biological opinion and safeguards for species has been completed. Those things haven't changed."
What has changed from the original lawsuit is the evidence on who is paying for it. The appellate court reversed an order to wind down the facility last year after saying there wasn't enough evidence to prove the federal government was reimbursing the state.
"We have all of that now," Bennett said. "The state of Florida had submitted an application, FEMA has processed it, awarded the money, and now disbursed grants."
ALSO READ: Trump admin pays Florida first $58 million in 'Alligator Alcatraz' reimbursements, state says
The amended suit also adds a new claim against the Endangered Species Act.
"[At the facility site], we had both the existence of very endangered species, like the Florida bonneted bat and the Florida panther, and we also had what's called critical habitat on the site that, unquestionably, was impacted by the project," Bennett said.
She said she'd hoped the original case would have prevented damage to the site.
"And now we're at a point where we're just trying to do our best to fix what has already been done," Bennett said.
She said the goal of the case is to get more information to the public and right the wrongs of the detention center.
"It's to get the environmental analyses that were required," Bennett said. "And through those federal laws to get conservation on the ground that will at this point remediate the harms that have been done."
She said another goal is to deter "bad acts" like the detention center in the future without environmental analyses in place.
Attorneys will head back to court in the next few months. Bennett said the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians indicated during last week's court hearing it would soon file an amended claim, and that attorneys representing the state and federal government would move to dismiss.
"These claims are meritless, and we look forward to presenting our arguments in court," a FEMA spokesperson told WUSF.
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This story was produced by WUSF as part of a statewide journalism initiative funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
