- Details
- By Chez Oxendine
- Policy and Law
President Donald Trump on Tuesday vetoed a bill that would have expanded the Miccosukee Tribe’s reserved area inside Everglades National Park, marking one of his first two vetoes of his second term.
The veto rejected a measure that aimed to protect homes and infrastructure at the tribe’s Osceola Camp from repeated flooding.
The White House announced the veto of H.R. 504, the Miccosukee Reserved Area Amendments Act, which would have directed the Interior Department to work with the tribe to safeguard structures at the camp. The site, built in the 1930s and later used for airboat tours, sits outside the tribe’s existing reserved area.
Trump said the federal government should not pay to fix “problems in an area that the Tribe has never been authorized to occupy,” and argued that the tribe had sought “special treatment” while opposing his immigration policies.
“The Miccosukee Tribe has actively sought to obstruct reasonable immigration policies that the American people decisively voted for when I was elected,” Trump wrote.
The veto comes as the Miccosukee Tribe continues to challenge the construction and operation of a 5,000 bed migrant detention center in the Everglades, known as Alligator Alcatraz. The tribe has joined litigation against federal agencies, arguing that the facility threatens ceremonial sites, villages and wildlife in the Big Cypress National Preserve.
The tribe’s filings, both alongside advocacy group Friends of the Everglades and in their own complaint, assert that the detention center was built without required environmental reviews and poses “a substantial threat to the rights and interests of the tribe.” The case centers on whether federal agencies bypassed environmental and cultural‑resource protections when approving the project.
The bill had bipartisan support in Congress and followed years of discussion about how to address flooding at Osceola Camp, where the tribe maintains homes, water systems and wastewater infrastructure, according to a Senate report.
Trump also vetoed a separate water‑infrastructure bill Monday, the Finish the Arkansas Valley Conduit Act. That veto was not related to the Miccosukee measure.
House leadership has not announced whether it will attempt to override the veto.
