MIAMI — When environmental groups sued in June alleging that the administrations of President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis cut corners while building an immigration detention center in the Everglades, the case was assigned to a Miami federal judge already immersed in a contentious lawsuit over Florida’s efforts to crack down on illegal immigration.

Just a few months ago, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams blocked a new Florida law that criminalizes undocumented immigrants in Florida — and held Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier in contempt of court when he told police departments they could ignore her order.

Now Williams, fresh off a ruling that paused the expansion of Alligator Alcatraz, is weighing whether to shut the site down entirely. She says her ruling will come no later than Thursday.

The pending decision places the veteran jurist in the spotlight and potentially positions her as one of the biggest thorns in the side of the DeSantis administration.

Contempt

Williams first earned the ire of state officials earlier this year while presiding over a case challenging an immigration law that went into effect in February making it a crime to enter Florida while undocumented. Williams temporarily blocked the law in April, saying it was likely unconstitutional because creating immigration law is a power reserved for the federal government.

Tensions escalated when Williams realized that Florida law enforcement agencies had continued to make arrests under the law despite her ruling. Uthmeier added fuel to the fire when he told law enforcement agencies that he “cannot prevent” them from enforcing the state law and told them he didn’t think they needed to obey the judge.

A media firestorm followed. Uthmeier ramped up his criticism of Williams, telling TV outlets that her decision to block the law was wrong and that she didn’t have the jurisdiction to block departments from enforcing it. His comments were backed by DeSantis and Evan Power, the chair of the Republican Party of Florida.

Williams held Uthmeier in contempt of court in June and ordered Uthmeier to submit reports twice a month on how many arrests had been made through the immigration law, and what law enforcement agencies made them. The higher courts upheld Williams’ contempt finding. An appeal of her preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the law is pending.

Uthmeier and DeSantis have continued to volley attacks on Williams as the environmental lawsuit against Alligator Alcatraz progresses. When Williams issued a two-week halt on efforts to expand Alligator Alcatraz, Uthmeier called her a “liberal, activist” judge during an interview with Fox Business.

Williams has mentioned their attacks during hearings. Last week, she noted that Uthmeier had during his Fox Business interview issued an open invitation for her and another Miami judge weighing a separate Alligator Alcatraz to visit the facility. She told lawyers for the state that she was ready to go assuming the invitation was serious.

Already, the state seems to be preparing for an adversarial ruling. DeSantis announced last week that he was opening a new immigration detention center in North Florida. State lawyers told Williams in court last week that the state was prepared to immediately appeal her order. The federal government also transferred hundreds of detainees out of Alligator Alcatraz heading into the weekend, dramatically lowering the population.

Decades in the Southern District

Williams was appointed by former President Barack Obama to serve as a judge in the Southern District of Florida in 2011. Before that, she worked on both sides of the federal courtroom as a prosecutor and public defender.

After receiving her law degree from the University of Miami, she became an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District in 1984. She moved over to the federal public defender’s office in 1990, then eventually became the chief federal public defender for the district in 1995, overseeing over 100 defenders, investigators and support staff. She also briefly served as the federal public defender for the Middle District of Florida at the same time when asked to fill a vacancy for about a year.

Marcos Jimenez, a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District, worked opposite Williams frequently while pursuing cases, he said. A Bush appointee and a Republican, Jimenez had many disagreements with Williams over policy, and he doesn’t run in the same circles with her anymore after leaving his job there. But he remembers her being diligent and even-handed in her work, he said.

“I’ve always respected her and thought that she’s a very fine judge,” said Jimenez, who currently has a private practice case before Williams. “She is someone who looks at the facts and the law, and makes her decisions based on what those are, not based on her political views ... for anybody to suggest otherwise is just flat wrong.”

Recent cases

One of the more notable recent cases that came before Williams involved inmates at the Metro West Detention Center in Doral during the COVID-19 pandemic. Medically vulnerable inmates sued over improper conditions contributing to the swift spread of the virus throughout the jail, asking to be released.

Williams ordered the jail to provide inmates with soap and masks, as well as other cleaning supplies, though she stopped short of granting the inmates’ release.

She also ordered that the facility provide updates every three days on how many inmates and correctional officers had been tested and how many had come up positive — information that had been sporadic across the county since the beginning of the pandemic.

Miami-Dade County appealed her ruling and got it overturned in a 2-1 decision. The federal appellate court said Williams had overstepped the law to require testing and supplies at one specific jail, at the expense of others in the county.

About a year later, she temporarily blocked the DeSantis administration from enforcing a state law that barred companies from requiring vaccination proof against Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings. However, Norwegian eventually lost the case on appeal.

Other major legal actions from Williams since 2020 have involved her reducing sentences in two cases. One involved a baseball agent convicted of smuggling Cuban players to the U.S., released a year early to care for his blind mother during COVID-19. The other involved an ex-Venezuelan official who was convicted of accepting bribes. She lowered his sentence from five years to two because he was the first to willingly cooperate with the money laundering investigation while five defendants remained at large.

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