DeSantis Says He Is Undeterred by Order Shutting Down Florida’s ‘Alligator Alcatraz’

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida vowed on Friday to defend an immigration detention center in the Everglades despite a federal judge’s order that it be shut down.

Mr. DeSantis did not address the judge’s findings that the construction of the detention center, known as Alligator Alcatraz, violated a federal law requiring a review of potential environmental harms before such projects are built.

“We had a judge try to upset the apple cart with respect to our deportation and detention processing center down in South Florida,” Mr. DeSantis said at an event in Panama City, Fla. He said the outcome was “preordained” by Judge Kathleen M. Williams of the Federal District Court in Miami, whom he called “an activist just that is trying to do policy from the bench.”

“This is not going to deter us,” he added. “We’re going to continue working on the deportations, advancing that mission.”

Judge Williams barred new detainees from being sent to the Everglades detention center, which opened in early July as the nation’s first state-run facility for federal immigration detainees. She ordered that current detainees be transferred and that much of the lighting, fencing and other materials at the site be removed within 60 days.

Lawyers for the DeSantis administration filed a notice to appeal immediately after the ruling. Judge Williams’s ruling is preliminary as the case continues to be litigated. The state will almost certainly ask the courts to keep the ruling from taking effect pending appeal.