A group coalition, ranging from environmental activists to Native Americans who advocate their ancestral homelands, converged on Saturday outside an airstrip in the Florida Everglades to protest the imminent construction of an immigrant detention center.
Hundreds of protesters aligned part of the US 41 highway that cuts through the swampy Everglades, also known as Tamiami Trail, as overturned trucks that transported materials that were filled in the airfield. The cars that passed through the horn in the support of the protesters waved signs that requested the protection of the expansive reserve that houses some native tribes and several endangered animal species.
Christopher Mcvoy, an environmentalist, said he saw a constant current of trucks entering the site while protested for hours. Environmental degradation was a great reason why it came out on Saturday. But as commissioner of the city of southern Florida, he said, concerns about immigration raids in his city also fed his opposition.
“The people I know are crying, and they weren’t far from that,” he said.
Florida officials have advanced last week in the construction of the complex called “Aligator Alcatraz” within the wet swamps of the Everglades.
The Government accelerated the project under emergency powers of an executive order issued by Governor Ron Desantis that addresses what he sees as an illegal immigration crisis. This order allows the State to avoid certain purchase laws and is the reason why construction has continued despite the objections of the mayor of Miami-Dade County, Daniella Levine Cava and local activists.
The installation will have temporary structures such as heavy duty tents and trailers to house detained immigrants. The State estimates that at the beginning of July, it will have 5,000 beds of immigration detention in operation.
Native American leaders in the region have seen construction as an invasion in their sacred homelands, which caused Saturday’s protest. In Big Cypress National Preserve, where the airstrip is located, 15 traditional villages of Miccosukeos and Seminole are, as well as cemeteries and other meeting sites.
Others have raised human rights concerns about what they condemn as the inhuman housing of immigrants. Concerns about environmental impacts have also been at the forefront, since groups such as the Center for Biological Diversity and the friends of the Everglades filed a lawsuit on Friday to stop the plans of the detention center.
“The Everglades are a vast and interconnected system of river and wetlands, and what happens in an area can have harmful impacts downstream,” said the samples of Eve Director Eve of Friends of the Everglades. “Therefore, it is really important that we have a clear idea of the impacts of wetlands that occur on the site.”
Bryan Griffin, a Desantis spokesman, said Friday in response to the litigation that the installation was a “staging operation necessary for mass deportations located in a pre -existing airport that will have no impact on the surrounding environment.”
Until the site undergoes comprehensive environmental review and public comments are sought, environmental groups say, construction should stop. The rapid establishment of the installation is “condemnatory evidence” that state and federal agencies expect it to be “too late” to reverse their actions if a court orders them to do so, said Elise Bennett, a senior lawyer for biological diversity who works in the case.
