(Miami) American justice ordered the temporary suspension of any new construction for the Florida migrants for “Alcatraz des Alligators”, which has become one of the symbols of the Muscée migration of the government of Donald Trump on Thursday.
The detention center was set up in June with bunk beds, wireless cages, and white canvas pavilions, all on an abandoned aerodrome in the middle of the swamps of the Everglades.
Immigrants already detained in the center can remain there, but a federal judge of Miami ordered the immediate stop of construction work for two weeks.
The decision of judge Kathleen Williams follows a procedure brought by two environmental associations, Friends of the Everglades and Center for Biological Diversity.
They believe that this detention center threatens the fragile ecosystem of surrounding swamps and has been built without studies of environmental impact.
It is “reassuring that the court intervened to protect sensitive waters, the starry sky and vulnerable creatures of the Everglades against any new damage while we continue our legal action”, reacted Elise Bennett, of the Center for Biological Diversity.
During a visit to the site in early July, US President Donald Trump made fun of illegal immigrants who would in the event of an escape to be attacked by the alligators, even if the attacks on humans are extremely rare.
Another legal action against this center considers that prisoners are deprived of lawyer there and are detained there without charge.
Donald Trump erected the fight against immigration as one of the absolute priorities of his second term, devoting hundreds of billions of dollars to it.
The number of immigrants held by the American immigration police (ICE) has reached a record level in June and a vast majority of them have no criminal record, according to an analysis carried out by AFP on the basis of official data.
At the end of July, a report by the NGO Human Rights Watch alerted to “abusive practices” carried out in three other retention centers for Florida migrants.
