The Center for Biological Diversity sued 266 times to block Trump's first term – and lost most of them.
Now the same group just quietly dropped its Clean Air Act lawsuit against Alligator Alcatraz.
But they just dropped it because Florida already won.
The Group That Called 21000 Deportations a Win for Their Side
The Center for Biological Diversity announced Tuesday it was withdrawing its lawsuit claiming Florida's diesel generators at the Everglades detention facility violated the Clean Air Act.
Their reasoning was breathtaking.
"We achieved the desired result," said staff attorney Ryan Maher.
The desired result was a facility that processed nearly 21,000 deportations before closing June 25 – drug traffickers, cartel members, child predators, and fentanyl dealers who would have otherwise been released back into Florida communities while their cases dragged through the courts.
That's what they're calling a victory.
https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/2070215647217209526?s=20
Alligator Alcatraz opened July 1, 2025, built in eight days using Florida's emergency powers.
Governor DeSantis stood at the closure announcement with White House Border Czar Tom Homan and listed what the facility accomplished.
Florida accounted for more than 40% of all state and local immigration arrests nationwide.
"We prevented preventable crimes," DeSantis said.
Homan was more specific: "More criminal aliens are off the streets in your neighborhoods, in the state of Florida."
How the Left Turns Environmental Law Into a Crowbar
The Center for Biological Diversity's co-founder said the quiet part out loud years ago.
"We're crazy to sit in trees when there's this incredible law where we can make people do whatever we want," he said.
He was talking about the Endangered Species Act.
Same playbook, different statute.
They filed 266 lawsuits against Trump's first term alone – more than one per week – using environmental law to attack whatever they couldn't stop through politics.
The Clean Air Act lawsuit against Alligator Alcatraz was never about benzene or particulate matter.
It was about making Florida's deportation operation expensive, slow, and legally radioactive long enough to shut it down.
They didn't shut it down.
The group – bankrolled by Pew Charitable Trusts, the Rockefeller Family Fund, and Jane Fonda's Turner Foundation – then declared victory anyway and moved to the next lawsuit.
They still have an active federal case arguing Florida skipped required environmental reviews before building the facility.
Their attorney said they won't stop "until every piece of infrastructure tied to this facility is gone for good."
They want the Trump and DeSantis administrations held accountable.
What they actually want is for 21,000 deportations to feel like a crime instead of a result.
Florida Built the Template and Is Already Running It Elsewhere
Florida's second state-run detention facility, Deportation Depot in Baker County, is still operating.
DeSantis made clear the Alligator Alcatraz closure was never a retreat – the facility was always temporary, a rapid-deployment solution built for speed and designed to be dismantled when the mission was done.
The mission was done.
What didn't get dismantled was the infrastructure that made it possible.
https://twitter.com/FoEverglades/status/2077135576935899169?s=20
Florida now leads every state in the country in 287(g) agreements – the federal deputizations that allow Florida sheriffs and officers to arrest, process, and hand over illegal immigrants directly to ICE.
That network exists because Alligator Alcatraz proved Florida could do this faster and at greater scale than anyone expected.
The radical lawyers who spent a year trying to stop it with generator permits just watched Florida prove something the left desperately needed to stay unproven: you can build a deportation operation from scratch in eight days, run it for a year, remove 21,000 dangerous people, and be fully dismantled before the opposition finishes drafting its next motion.
That's the result they achieved.
Sources:
- Ron DeSantis, "Governor Ron DeSantis Highlights the Success of Alligator Alcatraz," Executive Office of the Governor of Florida, June 2026.
- "Florida's 'Alligator Alcatraz' to Permanently Close, Gov. DeSantis Says," The Epoch Times, June 25, 2026.
- "Alligator Alcatraz Shuts Down; DeSantis, Border Czar Cites 21,000 Deportations," WPEC/The National Desk, June 25, 2026.
- "Environmental Group Drops One of Its Lawsuits over 'Alligator Alcatraz,'" WUSF, July 15, 2026.
- "Center for Biological Diversity," Activist Facts, November 3, 2022.
- "How the Center for Biological Diversity Grew in Its Fight Against the 'Status Quo,'" AZPM, November 12, 2019.
