Attorney General Alan Wilson fights against judicial overreach on Florida’s ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ facility

(COLUMBIA, S.C.) - South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson announced today that South Carolina joined 21 other states in filing a brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, pushing back against a federal judge’s order that shut down the construction of Florida’s illegal immigrant detention facility, better known as “Alligator Alcatraz.”

Attorney General Wilson said the ruling is a clear case of judicial overreach and misuse of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a law that applies only to federal agencies, not to states that build their own facilities, on their own land, with their own money.

“This has never been about protecting the environment; this is about activist judges trying to block states from enforcing immigration laws and carrying out President Trump’s mandate,” Wilson said. “Congress never gave unelected judges the power to use NEPA as a weapon against states. If they can stop Florida from building Alligator Alcatraz, they can stop any state from using its own state dollars to build prisons, schools, or public safety facilities. That’s not the rule of law; it’s the rule of partisan politics legislated from the bench.”

South Carolina joined the brief alongside Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

You can read the full brief here.