CA11 stays Alligator Alcatraz decision in 2-1 order

 Here's the 2-1 order (Lagoa for the majority, joined by Branch and Jordan in dissent).

 Judge Lagoa ends her order with this:

While the power to determine immigration policy lies with the Federal government, “[t]he pervasiveness of federal regulation does not diminish the importance of immigration policy to the States,” which “bear[ ] many of the consequences of unlawful immigration.”  Arizona, 567 U.S. at 397.  Many of those harmful con-sequences are present here.  Governor DeSantis has declared a state of emergency under Florida law because Florida is experiencing an “immigration crisis of unprecedented magnitude.”  DE 137-1 ¶ 3.  According to Joseph Harrison, a Lieutenant Colonel and Deputy Director for the Florida Highway Patrol (“FHP”), forcing Florida to shutter the detention facility will lead to overcrowding and will kneecap the State’s immigration-enforcement efforts.  Id. ¶¶ 5, 6.  Furthermore, he offers non-speculative evidence that in-sufficient detention space will lead to detainees being released back into the community: “[B]efore the detention facility at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport was established,” he ex-plains, “ICE regularly informed FHP officers that the federal government lacked sufficient detention capacity to detain illegal aliens intercepted by FHP,” and, “[i]n those instances, FHP was forced to let those illegal aliens go.”  Id. ¶ 5.  We are convinced that, if the injunction were to stay in place, it would bring the State’s already stressed and overcrowded system to a breaking point. 
On the other hand, the Plaintiffs have submitted declarations indicating that the conversion of the Site from a working air-port into a detention center will have a range of deleterious effects on the environment, including “light, water, and noise pollution, increased vehicular traffic, wildlife habitat degradation, and waste management issues.”  These declarations assert that these effects may “negatively impact” the ecosystem of the Everglades and the survival of various threatened or endangered species, although it is unclear whether these declarations have accounted for the Site’s former use as an airport in order to establish a reliable baseline to evaluate possible future environmental impacts.  DE 5-2 ¶¶ 13–14.  We need not, however, wade into that issue here.  As the Supreme Court reminds, there is no governmental project, especially one enacted in exigent circumstances, that does not pose some coun-tervailing risk.  Cf. Winter v. Nat. Res. Def. Council, Inc., 555 U.S. 7, 26 (2008) (holding that the balance of equities and consideration of overall public interest weighed in favor of the Navy, in spite of the fact that the Navy’s use of “mid-frequency active” sonar might cause “harm to an unknown number of the marine mammals,” be-cause blocking the Navy from using this technology would jeop-ardize the “safety of the fleet”).  Our job, at this stage, is to balance the equities, as well as the overall public interest, and we are com-pelled in this case to conclude that these factors favor the Defend-ants: While the environmental effects mentioned by the Plaintiffs may result in down-the-line harm, the injuries facing the Defend-ants and the public are critical, immediate, and concrete. 
We conclude that the balance of the harms and our consideration of the public interest favor a stay of the preliminary injunction. 

Judge Jordan starts his dissent this way: 

 Given the applicable burden on litigants who move for a stay, the deferential abuse of discretion standard that governs review of a preliminary injunction, and the clearly erroneous standard that limits appellate review of factual findings, the stay motion filed by the state and federal defendants should be a relatively simple denial.  The majority, however, essentially ignores the burden borne by the defendants, pays only lip service to the abuse of discretion standard, engages in its own factfinding, declines to consider the district court’s determination on irreparable harm, and performs its own balancing of the equities.  I therefore respectfully dissent from its decision to grant a stay of the preliminary injunction.