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The immigrant detention center in the Florida Everglades was embroiled in controversy before it opened last summer, and environmentalists are fighting to shut it down.

A Leon County circuit judge wrote that the laws allow access to facilities such as state prisons and county jails — but not to the immigrant-detention center run by the state.

Tribe officials say they are moving forward with their legal battle against the immigrant detention facility in the Everglades.

Five Democratic lawmakers filed the lawsuit in July after they made an unannounced visit to the facility in the Florida Everglades and were denied access.

An appeals court panel decided in a 2-1 vote to stay the federal judge's order pending the full appeal. The judges in the majority said it was in the public interest.

Governor Ron DeSantis said during a Tuesday press conference he is in talks with law enforcement in Panama City about opening a third immigration detention facility there.

The information delivered in an email comes less than a week after a federal judge ordered the detention center to wind down operations within 60 days.

A federal judge sided with environmental groups and the Miccosukee Tribe, ruling the state must wind down operations at the immigrant detention facility in the Everglades.

Dubbed the "Deportation Depot," Gov. Ron DeSantis called the vacant Baker County prison a "ready-made infrastructure." It's expected to open in a few weeks.

The DeSantis administration is preparing to open a second immigration detention facility at a shuttered state prison in north Florida.