Suit Challenges Florida’s Authority To Detain Migrants Under 287(g)

On a July 12 guided tour for legislators, Florida’s Division of Emergency Management—the agency running the site—described it as a “state-run immigration facility” with power “rooted in 287(g),” according to the complaint. The plaintiffs counter that any 287(g) authority flows to particular employees who have completed DHS training and certification, not to the agency itself—and they say FDEM has no 287(g) agreement with ICE at all. “People are being held without charge, cut off from their attorneys, and made invisible in the immigration system,” said Amy Godshall of the ACLU of Florida in a statement. “Families cannot even find out where their loved ones are. This is a crisis created entirely by the state’s reckless decision to ignore federal law and invent its own immigration jail in the middle of the Everglades.”

M.A. petitions for a writ of habeas corpus and seeks injunctive relief on behalf of a class, urging the federal court to halt detentions that, he says, were never authorized by Congress. The legal team includes Spencer Amdur, Michael K.T. Tan, Cody Wofsy, Hannah Steinberg, Corene Kendrick, Kyle Virgien, Omar Jadwat, and Eunice H. Cho of the ACLU Foundation; Amy Godshall and Daniel Tilley of the ACLU of Florida; Miriam Haskell and Alana Greer of Community Justice Project Inc.; and Mark Fleming and Mark Feldman of the National Immigrant Justice Center. The case is M.A. et al. v. Guthrie et al., No. 2:25-cv-00765 (M.D. Fla.).