U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams said Wednesday following days of testimony about the environmental impacts of the Everglades immigration detention camp that she plans to rule no later than Aug. 21 on a request to temporarily shut it down.

Were she to side with the plaintiffs, it would be a significant blow to the Trump and DeSantis administrations, which have touted the hastily constructed detention center as a successful new tool in the president’s mass-deportation campaign.

Williams, an Obama appointee, is presiding over a lawsuit filed by Friends of the Everglades, the Center for Biological Diversity, Earthjustice and the Miccosukee Tribe alleging the federal government and the state dodged federal environmental regulations.

  • FauxLiving@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    3 months ago

    I know one of the scientists who provided evidence for this case.

    They, very clearly, lied about the site in order to avoid environmental impact assessments.

    For example, they paved a huge section near the runway and in order to avoid having to determine the effects of runoff they said that there was already a concrete pad built in that area and they just replaced it.

    Unfortunately, for them, there are scientists who regularly take aerial photographs of the area to study the changing terrain in the Everglades.

    The photographs show the 10 acres that they paved over and were taken every few months for years. It’s clearly grass (you see tracks where the area was bushhogged). However, there was a small (10’x10’) pad that held some kind of tank.

    They lied (uhh, accidentally forgot to mention) the size of the pad when showing that it had been built years ago.

    That’s just one example, there were several more issues with similar fabrications.