This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Every spring, Florida’s Miccosukee Tribe observes its corn dance season on lands the tribe holds as sacred within the fragile Everglades. But this year’s festivities are different because of the migrant detention site that now looms among the tribal lands, Alligator Alcatraz.

One hindrance is that the light emanating for miles from the facility interferes with an important aspect of the Miccosukee’s religion, the orientation of the stars, said Curtis Osceola, the tribe’s chief operating officer. If not for the light pollution, the stars would gleam bright here in the night sky above the vast sawgrass prairies and cypress marshes of the remote river of grass.

“It’s hard to explain, and not everyone will understand our relationship with the land,” he said. “It’s as if someone went to a holy place, whether it was like church land, and said, ‘We’re going to raze this church land and put up a prison and put up a detention center.’ People would be up in arms. This is our place of worship. This is a sacred place. This doesn’t seem fair.”

“This is our place of worship. This is a sacred place. This doesn’t seem fair.”

The tribe, along with environmental groups, says they will continue their litigation over Alligator Alcatraz, where thousands of undocumented migrants have been detained since the facility opened last summer as part of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. The 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals last week invalidated a preliminary........

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