When William “Popeye” Osceola first learned about the construction of a sprawling immigration detention facility on land adjacent to the Miccosukee Reservation in the Florida Everglades, his first reaction was “shock and disgust.”
“I found out about it basically when everybody else found out about it, which, considering our tribal nation status with the government, that’s obviously an issue,” Osceola said in an interview. “Something so major is happening here in this environmentally damaged area.”
The Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, whose ancestral territory lies in the heart of the Everglades, announced on July 14 that it was joining a lawsuit against the state and federal governments for what they call a blatant violation of environmental and tribal sovereignty. The facility, nicknamed by the Trump administration as “Alligator Alcatraz,” was built in near-total secrecy at a decommissioned airfield in Collier County without any environmental impact study or tribal consultation, the lawsuit claims…