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Weekly Roundup: Results Achieved
July 19, 2026
Florida Weekly Roundup is a look back at last week in a Florida politics and government.
With the white tents dismantled, generators, lighting and signage removed, and fencing no longer standing around the airstrip at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, a fight over the environmental impact of Alligator Alcatraz quietly came to a close this week.
Devoid of detainees, the lawsuit over the state-run immigration detention center by the Center for Biological Diversity was withdrawn after satellite and aerial imagery showed the alleged “air-polluting equipment” had been largely dismantled and removed.
OTHER FIGHTS CONTINUE
“We achieved the desired result with our Clean Air Act lawsuit. This detestable facility’s air pollution will not continue,” said Ryan Maher, staff attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity. “But the fight continues to ensure that the site is fully remediated and the Trump and DeSantis administrations are held accountable.”
In late June, Gov. Ron DeSantis said the facility served its purpose, with those moved through the center transferred to other locations or moved out of the country.
Alligator Alcatraz closed on June 25, just shy of its one-year anniversary. But even before it opened on July 1, 2025, the facility faced numerous lawsuits on environmental, due process and civil rights grounds that sought to close it down.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida in May, argued the Florida Division of Emergency Management violated the federal Clean Air Act by failing to get air quality permits for the facility.
The group alleged the diesel generators and equipment caused “substantial, unpermitted pollution,” including the release of benzene, formaldehyde, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter, and would result in more than $120,000 in daily fines.
The group will continue to pursue other litigation in federal court, including a lawsuit filed in June 2025 alleging the environmental review studies weren’t completed before building the detention facility, a requirement before approval of federal contracts according to the National Environmental Policy Act.
“We and our partners will not stop until every piece of infrastructure tied to this facility is gone for good, the damage is assessed, and Big Cypress is restored,” Maher said.
In the year it was open, Alligator Alcatraz helped the federal government deport 21,000 people. Court records show Alligator Alcatraz cost the state approximately $1 million per day to run.
Florida’s other state-run detention facility, Deportation Depot, is still operating in Baker County.
TERROR PAUSED
A lengthy list of groups designated by the state as “domestic terrorist organizations” was put on hold until state law enforcement establishes regulations to implement the changes from a new state law.
The state on Monday requested additional time to respond to the Council on American-Islamic Relations federal lawsuit as the Florida Department of Law Enforcement intends to first issue regulations to implement the law (HB 1471) and a related public records exemption (HB 1473) from the 2026 regular session.
“No designation will be made before the regulations are finalized,” the filing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida in Tallahassee stated.
Scott McCoy, deputy legal director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which represents CAIR, said the state’s action shows the law is less about public safety than politics.
“The fact that Florida officials announced their intent to designate CAIR at their July 1 press conference, before regulations they now plan to issue have come into effect, shows their calculated and cruel plan to designate CAIR is not because it is in any way a threat to public safety, but because doing so suits their political agenda,” McCoy stated.
The law took effect July 1 and DeSantis that day declared he would seek the “terrorism” designation for CAIR, the Muslim Brotherhood, various foreign cartels, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran and the anti-fascism movement antifa.
The designations still needed to be backed by the members of the Florida Cabinet. A special meeting with DeSantis and the Cabinet members has yet to be announced.
TWO EXECUTIONS, ONE DAY
DeSantis put Florida in place to hold a day-night set of executions in less than two weeks.
As the state on Tuesday conducted its 10th execution of the year by lethal injection at Florida State Prison, DeSantis issued a new warrant for James Aren Duckett after the Florida Supreme Court lifted its stay of the former Mascotte police officer’s previously scheduled execution.
The action by DeSantis sets up two executions to take place at Florida State Prison on July 28, with Duckett scheduled to die at noon and Dominick Anthony Occhicone, 80, at 6 p.m., both by lethal injection.
Occhicone, who is set to become the oldest person put to death by the state in the modern execution era, killed his former girlfriend’s parents four decades ago in Pasco County.
Duckett was convicted of the 1987 death of 11-year-old Teresa McAbee.
Duckett, 68, was scheduled to be executed on March 31, but the justices imposed a stay to allow for the completion of DNA testing and a subsequent statistical analysis of the DNA sample.
The last time two executions were carried out in the state on the same day was May 12, 1964, when inmates charged with murder were put to death in Bay and Gadsden counties.
The deaths were the last conducted by the state until May 25, 1979, while waiting for the U.S. Supreme Court to make a final decision on whether the death penalty was legal.
In 1972, the court in Furman v. Georgia ruled the way the death penalty was being applied was unconstitutional. However, the court four years later said the death penalty could be used when applied with clear rules for judges and juries.
STORY OF THE WEEK:
An environmental advocacy group dropped a lawsuit after evidence showed Florida had taken down generators used to power Alligator Alcatraz.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
“I’m not an establishment pig. I’m a pig for the people and the hardworking families here in the state of Florida. I want to be even more clear, Republicans are a problem. But corporate Democrats are a problem as well. They are colluding with one another.” — Florida Rep. Angie Nixon, a Jacksonville Democrat, when asked Wednesday about her lack of national support in her bid to the party’s U.S. Senatorial nominee.
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