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.

"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 federal judge handed down a split decision Aug. 18 in a lawsuit brought by detainees at Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz.”

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

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.