MIAMI (AP) — A legal challenge to a hastily-built immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades was filed in the wrong venue, government attorneys argued Wednesday in the first of two hearings over the legality of “Alligator Alcatraz” in a lawsuit brought by environmental groups.
Even though the property is owned by Miami-Dade County, Florida’s southern district is the wrong venue for the federal lawsuit by environmental groups since the detention center is located in neighboring Collier County, which is in the state’s middle district, government attorneys argued during Wednesday's hearing in federal court in Miami.
“Everything is happening outside the southern district, either Collier County, Tallahassee or the District of Columbia," said attorney Jesse Panuccio, who represented the state of the Florida.
Friends of the Everglades attorney Paul Schwiep agreed that the lawsuit could have been filed in any of several districts, including Florida’s middle district, but the temporary facility could have significant impacts on the cities, environment and drinking water of Miami-Dade County, making the southern district an appropriate venue.
Schwiep also pointed out that the state only complained about venue after a judge appointed by President George W. Bush recused himself from the case earlier this month, and it was reassigned to U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Republicans have called Williams an “activist judge” after she found Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier in contempt for ignoring her orders in another case.
Panuccio denied any attempts of “judge-shopping” and said the state would be seeking to change the venue of any cases related to the detention facility filed in the southern district.
Williams did not rule on the venue challenge Wednesday. Any decision about whether to move the case could also influence a separate lawsuit brought by civil rights advocates who say that detainees at “Alligator Alcatraz” have been denied access to attorneys and immigration courts.
The federal and state government defendants in the civil rights case also argue that the lawsuit was filed in the wrong venue. At the request of a judge, the civil rights groups on Tuesday filed a revised class-action complaint arguing that the detainees' constitutional rights were being violated.
“Defendants have wholly failed to develop any policy or process for detainees to access legal counsel at the facility,” they wrote in a new filing seeking class-action status. “Attorneys have been unable to discover any working process for setting up calls, via phone or video, with their clients or prospective clients.”
Environmental groups filed their lawsuit against federal and state officials in Florida’s southern district last month, asking for the project being built on an airstrip in the heart of the Florida Everglades to be halted because the process didn’t follow state and federal environmental laws. Besides Wednesday's hearing over venue, a second hearing has been scheduled for next week on the environmental groups' request for temporary injunction.
The first of hundreds of detainees arrived a few days after the lawsuit was filed, and the facility has the capacity to hold 3,000 people.
The detention center was opened by Florida officials, but critics said it's unclear whether federal immigration officials or state officials are calling the shots. Florida officials nicknamed the facility after the closed island prison outside San Francisco to highlight its remoteness and difficulty to escape, but a draft emergency evacuation plan made public Wednesday referred to it officially as the South Florida Detention Facility. The plan said the temporary facility could be operating for a year or more.
Deportation flights from “Alligator Alcatraz” started last week.
Williams on Monday ordered that any agreements be produced in court between the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Florida Department of Emergency Management, a move that could shed some light on the relationship between federal and state agencies in running the facility.
Critics have condemned the facility as a cruel and inhumane, as well as a threat to the ecologically sensitive wetlands, while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Republican state officials have defended it as part of the state’s aggressive push to support President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
Kate Payne in Tallahassee contributed to this report.
Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform Bluesky: @mikeysid.bsky.social
Work progresses on a new migrant detention facility dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz," at Dade-Collier Training and Transition facility in the Florida Everglades, Friday, July 4, 2025, in Ochopee, Fla. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
Work progresses on a new migrant detention facility dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz," at Dade-Collier Training and Transition facility in the Florida Everglades, Friday, July 4, 2025, in Ochopee, Fla. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
NUSEIRAT, Gaza Strip (AP) — Sitting in her wheelchair, Haneen al-Mabhouh dreams of rebuilding her family, of cradling a new baby. She dreams of walking again. But with her leg gone, her life in Gaza is on hold, she says, as she waits to go abroad for further treatment.
An Israeli airstrike in July 2024 smashed her home in central Gaza as she and her family slept. All four of her daughters were killed, including her 5-month-old baby. Her husband was severely burned. Al-Mabhouh’s legs were crushed under the rubble, and doctors had to amputate her right leg above the knee.
“For the past year and a half, I have been unable to move around, to live like others. For the past year and a half, I have been without children,” she said, speaking at her parents’ home.
The 2-month-old ceasefire in Gaza has been slow to bring help for thousands of Palestinians who suffered amputations from Israeli bombardment over the past two years. The World Health Organization estimates there are some 5,000 to 6,000 amputees from the war, 25% of them children.
Those who lost limbs are struggling to adapt, faced with a shortage of prosthetic limbs and long delays in medical evacuations out of Gaza.
The WHO said a shipment of essential prosthetic supplies recently made it into Gaza. That appears to be the first significant shipment for the past two years.
Previously, Israel had let in almost no ready-made prosthetic limbs or material to manufacture limbs since the war began, according to Loay Abu Saif, the head of the disability program at Medical Aid for Palestinians, or MAP, and Nevin Al Ghussein, acting director of the Artificial Limbs and Polio Center in Gaza City.
The Israeli military body in charge of coordinating aid, known as COGAT, did not respond when asked how many prosthetic supplies had entered during the war or about its policies on such supplies.
Al-Mabhouh was asleep with her baby girl in her arms when the strike hit their home in Nuseirat, she said. For several weeks while recovering in the hospital, al-Mabhouh had no idea her children had been killed.
She underwent multiple surgeries. Her hand still has difficulty moving. Her remaining leg remains shattered, held together with rods. She needs a bone graft and other treatments that are only available outside of Gaza.
She was put on the list for medical evacuation 10 months ago but still hasn’t gotten permission to leave Gaza.
Waiting for her chance to go, she lives at her parents’ house. She needs help changing clothes and can’t even hold a pen, and remains crushed by grief over her daughters. “I never got to hear her say ‘mama,’ see her first tooth or watch her take her first steps,” she said of her baby.
She dreams of having a new child but can’t until she gets treatment.
“It’s my right to live, to have another child, to regain what I lost, to walk, just to walk again,” she said. “Now my future is paralyzed. They destroyed my dreams.”
The ceasefire has hardly brought any increase in medical evacuations for the 16,500 Palestinians the U.N. says are waiting to get vital treatment abroad — not just amputees, but patients suffering many kinds of chronic conditions or wounds.
As of Dec. 1, 235 patients have been evacuated since the ceasefire began in October, just under five a day. In the months before that, the average was about three a day.
Israel last week said it was ready to allow patients and other Palestinians to leave Gaza via the Israeli-held Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt. But it's unsure that will happen because Egypt, which controls the crossing’s other side, demands Rafah also be opened for Palestinians to enter Gaza as called for under the ceasefire deal.
Dr. Richard Peeperkorn, the WHO's representative in the occupied Palestinian territory, told The Associated Press that the backlog is caused by the lack of countries to host the evacuated patients. He said new medevac routes need to be opened, especially to the Israeli-occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, where hospitals are ready to receive patients.
Yassin Marouf lies in a tent in central Gaza, his left foot amputated, his right leg barely held together with rods.
The 23-year-old and his brother were hit by Israeli shelling in May as they returned from visiting their home in northern Gaza that their family had been forced to flee. His brother was killed. Marouf lay bleeding on the ground, as a stray dog attacked his mangled left leg.
Doctors say his right leg will also need to be amputated, unless he can travel abroad for operations that might save it. Marouf said he can’t afford painkillers and can’t go to the hospital regularly to have his bandages changed as they’re supposed to.
“If I want to go to the bathroom, I need two or three people to carry me,” he said.
Mohamed al-Naggar had been pursuing an IT degree at the University of Palestine before the war.
Seven months ago, shrapnel pierced his left leg during strikes on the house where his family was sheltering. Doctors amputated his leg above the knee. His right leg was also badly injured and shrapnel remains in parts of his body.
Despite four surgeries and physical therapy, the 21-year-old al-Naggar can’t move around.
“I’d like to travel abroad and put on a prosthetic and graduate from college and be normal like young people outside Gaza,” he said.
Some 42,000 Palestinians have suffered life-changing injuries in the war, including amputations, brain trauma, spinal cord injuries and major burns, the WHO said in an October report.
The situation has “improved slightly” for those with assistance needs but “there is still a huge overall shortage of assistive products,” such as wheelchairs, walkers and crutches. Gaza has only eight prosthetists able to manufacture and fit artificial limbs, the WHO said in a statement to the AP.
The Artificial Limbs and Polio Center in Gaza City, one of two prosthetics centers still operating in the territory, received a shipment of material to manufacture limbs just before the war began in 2023, said its director, Al Ghussein. Another small shipment entered in December 2024, but nothing since.
The center has been able to provide artificial limbs for 250 cases over the course of the war, but supplies are running out, Al Ghussein said.
No pre-made prosthetic legs or arms have entered, according to Abu Saif of MAP, who said Israel does not ban them, but its procedures cause delays and “in the end they ignore it.”
Ibrahim Khalif wants a prosthetic right leg so he can get a job doing manual labor or cleaning houses to support his pregnant wife and children.
In January, he lost his leg when an Israeli airstrike hit Gaza City while he was out getting food.
“I used to be the provider for my kids, but now I’m sitting here," Khalif said. "I think of how I was and what I’ve become.”
Prosthetic limb technician Ahmed Al-Ashqar, 34, prepares a leg amputation splint in the first stage of building an artificial leg at Hamad Hospital in Zawaida, central Gaza Strip, Thursday, Nov. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Yassin Marouf, 23, second from right, who lost his left foot and suffered a severe injury to his right leg after Israeli shelling in May, sits on a mattress in a tent surrounded by family and neighbors in Zawaida, central Gaza, Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Haneen al-Mabhouh, 34, who lost her leg in an Israeli strike on her home that also killed all four of her daughters, including her 5-month-old baby, shows a photo of one of her daughters on a cellphone while sitting in a wheelchair in her family home in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip, Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Haneen al-Mabhouh, 34, who lost her leg in an Israeli strike on her home that also killed all four of her daughters, including her 5-month-old baby, sits in a wheelchair in her family home in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip, Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Yassin Marouf, 23, who lost his left foot and suffered a severe injury to his right leg after being hit by Israeli shelling in May, lies in a tent surrounded by his family in Zawaida, central Gaza, Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
