Laravel -- I am trying to load another env file that is inside a folder

Question

I've been trying to resolve this issue for two days now. I'd really appreciate some help.

We are going to use a single codebase for multiple domains. I can not use any multitenancy packages available because our codebase is currently a hybird one which is mixed with codeigniter.

So I wrote a package that creates env files under the app root as .envs/.env.{$id} ... so they are all in the .envs folder. My package creates the env files etc and has everything I need on the created env file.

I wrote a middleware for the same package to make laravel load the created env file. this is where it does not work. My package's service provder

namespace ODS\Tenant;

use Illuminate\Contracts\Http\Kernel;
use Illuminate\Support\ServiceProvider;
use ODS\Tenant\Console\CreateEnvFileCommand;
use ODS\Tenant\Http\Middleware\LoadTenantConfig;

class TenantServiceProvider extends ServiceProvider
{
    public function register()
    {
        $this->app->bind('tenantmanager', function ($app) {
            return new TenantManager();
        });

        $this->mergeConfigFrom(__DIR__ . '/../config/config.php', 'tenant');
    }

    public function boot()
    {
        if ($this->app->runningInConsole()) {
            $this->commands([
                CreateEnvFileCommand::class,
            ]);
        }

        $kernel = app()->make(Kernel::class);
        $kernel->pushMiddleware(LoadTenantConfig::class);
    }
}

and the middleware for the package

<?php

namespace ODS\Tenant\Http\Middleware;

use Closure;
use Dotenv\Dotenv;
use ODS\Tenant\TenantManager;
use ODS\Tenant\EnvFileManager;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\App;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Artisan;

class LoadTenantConfig
{
    public function handle($request, Closure $next)
    {
        $did = TenantManager::findDistrictId();
        $envFile = App::basepath()."/.envs/.env.{$did}";

        if (! is_file($envFile)) {
            $envFileManager = new EnvFileManager($did);
            $envFileManager->makeEnvFile($did);
        }

        $dotenv = Dotenv::createMutable(App::basePath().'/.envs', ".env.{$did}");
        $dotenv->load();

        Artisan::call('config:clear');
        Artisan::call('cache:clear');

        App::useEnvironmentPath(App::basePath() . '/.envs');
        App::loadEnvironmentFrom(App::basePath(). "/.envs/.env.{$did}");

        // App::configPath($envFile);
        // dd(App::environmentFile());
        // dd(config('app'));
        return $next($request);
    }
}

What is interesting is that in the middleware above, couple of lines before the end of file, I have dd(App::environmentFile()); and it actually returns the new env file under the .envs folder.

but

in a random controller when I do something like echo config('app.name');, it is still the value from the default .env file. I do not understand what is happening. When I do dd($_ENV); in my controller, I see the values so the Dotenv part is working. I have in my config files to use the env or default to value but it is using the env values from the default .env file instead of the .envs/.env.{$id} file