The answer could play a key role in a legal battle over the facility’s fate. And it has bigger implications, too.

"Putting people in tents in the middle of the Everglades is a great tool to make them give up their cases," said one immigration attorney

A federal judge tossed out part of a lawsuit brought by detainees at the "Alligator Alcatraz" detention center in the Florida Everglades, handing a partial victory to the Trump administration.

A Florida federal judge heard arguments about the conditions at "Alligator Alcatraz" detention center in the Everglades but gave no ruling or injunction.

On a sweltering afternoon in the Everglades, faith and activism intersected — as the nonprofit Guatemalan Maya Center organized a Catholic mass outside Alligator Alcatraz, the remote immigration detention center.

An alligator made a meal out of an invasive Burmese python at Shark Valley in the Florida Everglades, near Alligator Alcatraz, an ICE detention center

A month into his detention at Alligator Alcatraz, Daniel Ortiz Piñeda faced a stark choice: continue his legal fight for asylum or give it up to hopefully put an end to his extended stay at the makeshift immigration detention camp in the Everglades.