Dara Kam/News Service of Florida

An appeals-court decision this month striking down the state’s ban on openly carrying firearms has affected another law establishing places where guns are off-limits, according to law-enforcement officials and some gun-rights proponents.Attorney General James Uthmeier quickly embraced the Sept. 10 open-carry decision by a panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal as “the law of the state” and issued guidance for prosecutors, police and sheriffs warning them not to arrest or put on trial “law-abiding citizens carrying a firearm in a manner that is visible to others.”The decision overturned a 1987 law that made it a misdemeanor to visibly display guns. While people were barred for decades from openly carrying guns, they could get concealed-weapons licenses.

Federal officials are complying with a judge’s order and have stopped sending immigrants to a detention center in the Everglades, less than two months after Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration launched the facility dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” in support of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts.

Calling it "exactly the kind of disaster that Congress took pains to avoid," attorneys for immigrants held at a detention center in the Everglades filed a lawsuit alleging Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration lacks the authority to run the facility.The lawsuit, filed Friday in the federal court’s Middle District of Florida, is the third major legal challenge to the detention center, erected by the DeSantis’ administration as part of the state’s support of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts.

Federal officials are “overwhelmed” by the number of undocumented immigrants being locked up as part of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan because of a detention-bed shortage, according to a key player in Florida’s efforts to assist the White House.The capacity issue is expected to escalate in Florida in the coming weeks as sheriffs and police chiefs ramp up arrests and detention of undocumented immigrants, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd told Gov. Ron DeSantis and state Cabinet members, who met Tuesday as the State Board of Immigration Enforcement.

As they continue to fight a legal effort by environmental groups to block an immigrant-detention center in the Everglades, lawyers for Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration argued Monday that the lawsuit was filed in the wrong federal-court district.Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity are seeking a temporary restraining order or a preliminary injunction to stop state and federal officials from adding more detainees and additional construction at the remote facility, which the state built adjacent to an airstrip known as the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport.

Citing “significant concerns about environmental degradation” and threats to “traditional and religious ceremonies,” members of the Miccosukee Tribe are trying to join a lawsuit challenging the immigrant-detention center in the Everglades.The facility, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” by Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Republican leaders, neighbors 10 villages that are home to the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida in the Big Cypress National Preserve — including a village 1,000 feet away from one of the detention center’s boundaries — as well as areas where tribal members work and attend school.

As they urge a U.S. district judge to halt an immigrant-detention center in the Everglades, environmental groups are pushing back against Trump administration arguments seeking to distance the federal government from responsibility for the project.The state last week began operating what has been dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” at a remote site surrounded by the Everglades and the Big Cypress National Preserve, as Gov. Ron DeSantis and other officials try to help President Donald Trump’s mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit last month seeking a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction to put the project on hold until legal wrangling is resolved.

Out-of-state students attending Florida universities could see a 10 percent increase in tuition this fall and an additional hike the following school year, under a rule unanimously adopted by the state university system’s Board of Governors on Wednesday.Tuition hikes for out-of-state students would have to be approved by university boards of trustees, and schools would have to maintain their current ratio of in-state students to out-of-state students.

Records related to a state House probe of a nonprofit linked to First Lady Casey DeSantis’ signature Hope Florida assistance program are part of an “open” investigation, Leon County State Attorney Jack Campbell’s office said Tuesday.House Health Care Budget Chairman Alex Andrade, R-Pensacola, submitted records to Campbell’s office late last month after concluding a House inquiry into the Hope Florida Foundation, a nonprofit linked to the Hope Florida program.