Lawyers seeking a temporary restraining order against an immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades say that “Alligator Alcatraz” detainees have been barred from meeting attorneys, are being held without any charges and that a federal immigration court has canceled bond hearings.
A virtual hearing in federal court in Miami was being held Monday on a lawsuit that was filed July 16. A new motion on the case was filed Friday.
Lawyers who have shown up for bond hearings for “Alligator Alcatraz” detainees have been told that the immigration court doesn’t have jurisdiction over their clients, the attorneys wrote in court papers. The immigration attorneys demanded that federal and state officials identify an immigration court that has jurisdiction over the detainees and start accepting petitions for bond, claiming the detainees constitutional rights to due process are being violated.
“This is an unprecedented situation where hundreds of detainees are held incommunicado, with no ability to access the courts, under legal authority that has never been explained and may not exist,” the immigration attorneys wrote. “This is an unprecedented and disturbing situation.”
The lawsuit is the second one challenging “Alligator Alcatraz.” Environmental groups last month sued federal and state officials asking that the project built on an airstrip in the heart of the Florida Everglades be halted because the process didn’t follow state and federal environmental laws.
Critics have condemned the facility as a cruel and inhumane threat to the ecologically sensitive wetlands, while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Republican state officials have defended it as part of the state’s aggressive push to support President Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has praised Florida for coming forward with the idea, as the department looks to significantly expand its immigration detention capacity.
Pasadena Mayor Victor Gordo took a break on a warm day, wiped his brow and pointed out the Folgers coffee can in the corner of his office.
He’s told the story many times, but felt it was worth repeating, given recent events.
For years, Gordo’s parents were undocumented. They crossed the border from Zacatecas, Mexico, when he was a young child, settled in Pasadena and raised their family. Gordo’s father was a dishwasher and cook; his mother was a seamstress in a factory that used to be across from City Hall. The family lived in a converted garage.
“Under my parents’ bed was a Folgers coffee can, and in that can was cash, a list of names and phone numbers, copies of birth certificates and identification cards,” said Gordo, who was the oldest child and describes himself as a latchkey kid.
“If my parents didn’t come home, I was to take that can and go knock on the neighbor’s house” and get help, Gordo said.
The can in his office isn’t the original. It’s a replica, and a reminder.
Pasadena Mayor Victor Gordo is the son of immigrant parents.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
With federal raids across Southern California, families and neighborhoods have been reeling. People have been afraid to leave the house following arrests at car washes, building supply centers, restaurants, the Garment District and street vending locations.
Gordo knows how they feel.
“We lived in fear, and that’s what’s so offensive about this, and painful, frankly,” he said.
In Pasadena, Gordo said, it hasn’t been clear whether the sweeps are being conducted by legit federal agents or vigilantes. Their cars are unmarked. Their faces are shielded. Their uniforms don’t answer any questions.
In recent days, a man exited a vehicle in Pasadena and pointed a gun in the direction of protesters before speeding away, emergency lights flashing. At a bus stop, several men were detained, some of whom were on their way to work on construction sites in the post-fire rebuilding of Altadena, according to Gordo.
And the city canceled some swimming and other recreational programs Saturday amid fears of increased federal enforcement activity. Gordo told The Times that masked men with guns and vests had chased several men at Villa Parke.
“They’re creating volatile, dangerous situations,” Gordo told me, saying he fears that bullets will fly through neighborhoods, or that police will arrive on scene and not know what’s what or who’s who.
Even people with legal status are wary, Gordo said, because some of the raids appear to be arbitrary and indiscriminate. As my colleague Rachel Uranga reported, the majority of those arrested in the first 10 days of June in Southern California had no criminal records, despite Trump’s vow to reel in “the worst of the worst.”
“I’m carrying my passport with me,” Gordo said.
Pasadena Mayor Victor Gordo outside City Hall in Pasadena.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
“The overreach is stigmatizing an entire swath of our society. Whether you look or sound like an immigrant, in the eyes of others, you are automatically considered an outsider, and that’s morally and legally wrong.”
Gordo’s positions on immigration enforcement haven’t always gotten straight A’s from immigrant rights advocates. In 2017, L.A. Progressive said Gordo’s coffee can story was compelling, but accused the then-councilman of waffling on a proposed city ordinance prohibiting police contacts with any federal law enforcement agencies.
The article said Gordo was opposed to local police “having contacts with ICE,” but said on one occasion that he “favored an exception for bad guys.”
Gordo ultimately voted in favor of that ordinance, which passed unanimously, and told me he feels now as he did then. The vast majority of undocumented immigrants are here to work hard and create opportunities for their families, he said. Same as his family. But there have to be consequences for “bad actors,” he added, and that’s a criminal justice matter, not an immigration issue.
“If the federal government or our own police believe there is someone who has violated the law, they should address that issue,” Gordo said. “But they should do it respecting the Constitution of the United States, and what the federal government is doing now is missing due process.”
Also missing, says Gordo, is any conversation about immigration reform that would serve the needs of employers and give immigrants a pathway to making even greater contributions.
He recalled that when he was about 10, his family moved back to Mexico temporarily as part of the process of establishing legal status in the U.S., which was made possible under the Carter administration. His father is a U.S. citizen, as was his late mother. Gordo and a sibling became attorneys; another is a doctor and yet another is an educator.
Now, said Gordo, there’s no path to legalization. There’s just this hypocritical system in which there is demand for immigrant labor in many industries, along with demonization of these very contributors.
Pablo Alvarado, a Pasadena resident and executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, told me he’s had differences with Gordo over the years. But he thinks the events of the last month have prompted the mayor to more fully embrace his immigrant identity.
“He’s stepping up to the moment and I’m very proud of what he’s doing,” said Alvarado, who has joined Gordo at vigils and demonstrations. “It’s one thing to tell the story of where you came from, and another thing to … confront the powers … behind these unlawful ICE operations. … I think he’s been fearless.”
Gordo told me he visited the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles on June 18, with Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) and state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Alhambra), to check on arrestees. They were denied entry, but Gordo met a distraught woman from Pomona who was not being allowed to deliver heart medication to her husband.
Gordo offered his services as an attorney and was allowed entry along with the woman. He said he later learned that the husband had been arrested during his lunch break on a landscaping job, had been in the country 22 years with no criminal record and was in the process of obtaining a green card.
Gordo said that when he and the woman entered the detention center, the husband and wife were separated by a glass partition.
“She was crying and shaking,” Gordo said. “He was telling her it was all going to be okay. He was comforting her, and trying to smile.”
The partition had a small opening. They couldn’t fit their hands through it, but Gordo watched as the pair hooked their pinky fingers.
“All she could muster was, ‘I told you,’” Gordo said. “‘I told you not to go to work.’”
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court said Monday the Trump administration may deport criminal migrants to South Sudan or Libya even if those countries are deemed too dangerous for visitors.
By a 6-3 vote, the conservative majority set aside the rulings of a Boston-based judge who said the detained men deserved a “meaningful opportunity” to object to being sent to a strange country where they may be tortured or abused.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a 19-page dissent and was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
“In matters of life and death, it is best to proceed with caution. In this case, the Government took the opposite approach,” she said. “I cannot join so gross an abuse of the Court’s equitable discretion.”
Last month, the government put eight criminal migrants on a military plane bound for South Sudan.
“All of these aliens had committed heinous crimes in the United States, including murder, arson, armed robbery, kidnapping, sexual assault of a mentally handicapped woman, child rape, and more,” Trump’s Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer told the court. They also had a “final order of removal” from an immigration judge.
But U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in Boston said the flight may have defied an earlier order because the men were not given a reasonable chance to object. He said the Convention Against Torture gives people protection against being sent to a country where they may be tortured or killed.
He noted the U.S. State Department had warned Americans: “Do not travel to South Sudan due to crime, kidnapping and armed conflict.”
Sauer said this case was different from others involving deportations because it dealt with the “worst of the worst” among immigrants in the country without authorization. He said these immigrants were given due process of law because they were convicted of crimes and were given a “final order of removal.”
However, their native country was unwilling to take them.
“Many aliens most deserving of removal are often the hardest to remove,” he told the court. “As a result, criminal aliens are often allowed to stay in the United States for years on end, victimizing law-abiding Americans in the meantime.”
In April, Murphy said “this presents a simple question: before the United States forcibly sends someone to a country other than their country of origin, must that person be told where they are going and be given a chance to tell the United States that they might be killed if sent there?”
He said the plaintiffs were “seeking a limited and measured remedy … the minimum that comports with due process.”
The beef is building between Bruce Springsteen and President Trump.
The Boss did not back down on his fiery rhetoric against Trump on the third night of his “Land of Hopes and Dreams” tour in Manchester, England, on Saturday — a day after Trump lashed out against the legendary singer on Truth Social, calling him an “obnoxious jerk,” a “dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker,” and writing that he should “keep his mouth shut.”
Springsteen didn’t oblige. In a resolute three-minute speech from the Co-op Live venue, Springsteen thanked his cheering audience for indulging him in a speech about the state of America: “Things are happening right now that are altering the very nature of our country’s democracy, and they’re too important to ignore.”
He then repeated many of the lines that he used during a previous Manchester show — the same words that upset Trump to begin with, including the administration defunding American universities, the rolling back of civil rights legislation and siding with dictators, “against those who are struggling for their freedoms.”
Trump’s Truth Social post contained what appeared to be a threat, writing of Springsteen, “We’ll see how it goes for him,” when he gets back to the country. This did not dissuade the “Born in the USA” singer.
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“In my home, they’re persecuting people for their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. That’s happening now,” Springsteen said. “In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world’s poorest children to sickness and death. That’s happening now. In my country, they’re taking sadistic pleasure in the pain they inflict on loyal American workers.”
In a steady voice, he listed the many concerns of those who oppose Trump, his enablers and his policies.
“They are removing residents off American streets without due process of law and deploying them to foreign detention centers as prisoners. That’s happening now. The majority of our elected representatives have utterly failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government,” Springsteen said as the crowd applauded and yelled its support. “They have no concern or idea of what it means to be deeply American.”
He finished on a positive note.
“The America I’ve sung to you about for 50 years is real, and regardless of its many faults, it’s a great country with a great people, and we will survive this moment. Well, I have hope, because I believe in the truth of what the great American writer James Baldwin said. He said, ‘In this world, there isn’t as much humanity as one would like, but there’s enough.’ ”
Springsteen has long been a vocal critic of Trump, and campaigned for former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. Trump is known for his angry diatribes against celebrities who criticize him, including Taylor Swift and Robert DeNiro.
