Within 60 days, the facility must also remove “all generators, gas, sewage, and other waste and waste receptacles,” which calls into question how it would operate.

Judge Williams issued a preliminary injunction Aug. 21, saying the Trump administration should pack up Alligator Alcatraz and leave the Everglades.

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

In a letter sent late Tuesday to the heads of the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and FEMA, the lawmakers expressed concern that the Trump administration's decision to use what lawmakers called a "novel state-run immigration detention model" could violate federal law and make the federal government less accountable for the conditions at immigrant detention centers.

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.

"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