Decisions

M.D. Fla. March 27, 2026

This is the continuation of C.M. v. Noem after transfer. The court provisionally certified a class defined as “All persons who are currently, or in the future, held at the Alligator Alcatraz detention facility.” Three barriers to access to counsel remained before the court: the requirement that in-person legal visits be arranged in advance, the absence of confidential, free and unmonitored outgoing calls to lawyers, and the failure to publish protocols for attorney access. On telephone calls the court found for the detained plaintiffs, and rejected the account given by the government’s witnesses: “unlike Saunders’ and Lumm’s testimony about unscheduled legal visits, the Court finds their testimony regarding unmonitored, unrecorded legal calls lacking in credibility for the reasons below.” It held that the plaintiffs “have demonstrated a substantial likelihood of success on their claims asserting that the facility’s policies regarding monitoring legal phone calls violate their First Amendment free speech rights.” An attorney declaration recorded in the order: “The only way that clients . . . detained at Alligator Alcatraz can call me is still via a monitored, recorded outgoing phone line.” On in-person visits the court found the other way, and believed the same two witnesses: “The Court finds Saunders’ and Lumm’s testimony that unscheduled visits have occurred and will continue to occur credible. And therefore, neither Detained Plaintiffs nor Organizational Plaintiffs can demonstrate a First Amendment violation based on a scheduling requirement for in-person visits.”

Access to counsel First Amendment Class certification Preliminary injunction Monitored telephone calls Conditions of detention

Caution The credibility finding is specific to the evidence about telephone calls. The same witnesses were believed on the separate question of in-person visits. Any account describing the court as having found the government generally not credible overstates the order. At the hearing the plaintiffs abandoned several claims and the court recorded that it therefore did not consider them: the timeliness of legal mail, the confidentiality of in-person and video legal visits, and delays in updating the online detainee locator. This decision circulates under the incorrect caption H.C.R. v. Mullin. There is no party of that name in the case. It also circulates with a description of legal conferences conducted in a cage within earshot of officers. The words cage and auditory appear nowhere in the order, and the confidentiality claim on which such a finding would have rested was withdrawn. That material appears to originate in the report of the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General of September 2026, which is a separate document and not a judicial finding. A reporter citation, 825 F. Supp. 3d 1267, is in circulation and the Coalition has not been able to verify it.

S.D. Fla. August 18, 2025

The case concerned the operations of the Florida detention facility commonly called Alligator Alcatraz. The court opened its order by locating it: “This case involves the operations of Alligator Alcatraz, a detention facility designed by the State of Florida and located in Collier County, in the Middle District of Florida.” Detained plaintiffs, together with attorneys and organisations, alleged that state and federal officials had blocked confidential communication between people held at the facility and their lawyers, in breach of the First Amendment. A group of the detained plaintiffs separately alleged that the Executive Office for Immigration Review had breached the Fifth Amendment by failing to identify an immigration court with jurisdiction over their cases. The court dismissed the Fifth Amendment claim: “The Fifth Amendment claim is moot and must be dismissed.” It had been “premised entirely on the contention that ‘Defendants have failed to identify which immigration court has jurisdiction over Alligator Alcatraz.’” Two days before the order the government had given notice that the Executive Office for Immigration Review had designated Krome as the administrative control court for the facility. The court rejected both the capable-of-repetition and the voluntary-cessation exceptions. The court did not decide the First Amendment claims. It held that venue was improper: “Plaintiffs have failed to make a prima facie showing that the alleged events substantially occurred here, in the Southern District of Florida.” The claims were transferred to the Middle District of Florida, where the facility sits. The court noted that the airport on which the facility was built “mostly sits in Collier County, though a small portion of the runway juts into Miami-Dade County.”

Access to counsel First Amendment Fifth Amendment Immigration court jurisdiction Venue Mootness Conditions of detention

Caution This decision settles where the case is heard and whether one claim survives. It makes no finding about conditions at the facility and no finding about the treatment of anyone held there. A reporter citation for this decision, 796 F. Supp. 3d 1198, is in circulation. The Coalition has not been able to verify it against any primary source and does not reproduce it. The docket number and the date above are verified from the court record. The transferred case continued in the Middle District of Florida as H.C.R. v. Noem, No. 2:25-cv-00747, recorded separately in this register.