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one Three court challenges against the Florida Everglades immigration detention center have ended after the immigration detainee who filed the lawsuit agreed to be deported and will soon leave the country, his attorneys said.
Detainee at facility dubbed ‘Alcatraz’ asks federal court to hear his case fort myersFlorida State, was fired Monday.
“Petitioner is no longer detained at Alligator Island, he has formally agreed to be deported, and he will soon be leaving the United States,” his attorneys wrote in a court motion. One of his attorneys, Spencer Amdur of the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, said by phone Tuesday that the detainee, referred to only as MA in court documents, would be returned to Chile.
The lawsuit claims that immigration is a federal issue and that Florida agencies and private contractors hired by the state do not have the authority to operate the facility under federal law. detainee People entering the facility disappear from the normal detainee tracking system and have difficulty getting legal help, the lawsuit says.
Florida leads other states in building facilities to support President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. In addition to the Everglades facility, which received its first detainees in July, Florida has opened an immigration detention center in Northeast Florida and is considering opening a third facility in the Florida Panhandle.
MA is married to a U.S. citizen and has five U.S. citizen stepchildren. He entered the United States on a visa in 2018 and later applied for asylum. Court documents show he had a work permit, Social Security card and driver’s license before his arrest last July.
After his arrest and before he was transported to the Everglades facility, police forced him to sign a form in plain English that he couldn’t understand, but was later told it was a voluntary deportation form, according to court documents.
While at the Everglades Detention Facility, he was hospitalized twice and placed in a wheelchair because he lost feeling in his legs. “Ma was able to walk when he entered the hospital, but he is now in a wheelchair,” his lawsuit states.
The Massachusetts case is one of three federal lawsuits challenging the practices of an immigration detention center built this summer at a remote airport in the Florida Everglades by the administration of Republican Gov. Trump. Ron DeSantis.
In a separate case, a federal judge in Miami last summer ordered the facility to cease operations within two months because officials failed to conduct a review of the detention center’s environmental impact. But an appeals court panel temporarily put that decision on hold, allowing the facility to remain open.
In a third lawsuit, detainees sought a ruling ensuring they could communicate confidentially with lawyers.
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