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.

Although a federal judge in Miami ordered their case be moved to another Florida district, the ACLU and other plaintiffs suing the controversial migrant detention facility over access to attorneys insist they'll win the litigation - and that they have already been handed "an important victory.

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

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