Florida is Ground Zero for Mass Deportations
April 23, 2025
Last week, a U.S. citizen named Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez was arrested in Florida and held in the county jail under an ICE detainer before finally being released on Friday, April 18. This is all despite the fact that Lopez-Gomez showed the judge his proof of citizenship; the judge said at the time she did not have the authority to release him, in another example of how the crimmigration system generates a quixotic maze for people to stumble through (often without the benefit of legal representation).
Lopez-Gomez was in a car with other people driving from Georgia to Florida for work when they were stopped by what appears to be state police. The driver was evidently arrested for driving without a license, which is a very common pretextual arrest for immigrants. Lopez-Gomez was also arrested and placed in the Leon County Jail. (Leon County contains the state capital Tallahassee and is right on the border with Georgia.) Even though the charges against Lopez-Gomez were dropped, he remained in the jail because ICE had placed a detainer on him. In Florida, a detainer means that the jailers are supposed to hold people for 48 hours in order for ICE to pick them up and take them into ICE custody. Why was there a detainer on a U.S. citizen? We don’t know.
Law enforcement said they arrested Lopez-Gomez under Florida’s SB 4C, which Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed in February. SB 4C makes it a misdemeanor (punishable by a mandatory nine months of incarceration) for immigrants (“unauthorized aliens” per the statute) to “knowingly” enter Florida “after entering the United States by eluding or avoiding examination or inspection by immigration officers.” There are escalating punishments for people who have prior immigration arrests. Basically, it is an “illegal entry” statute for Florida. (There is a federal “illegal entry” statute that makes it a misdemeanor to enter the country without prior authorization, like a visa or asylum claim. Being in the United States without a valid visa or other temporary status is not a “crime” but a civil offense.)
On April 4 of this year, a federal judge blocked implementation of the law pending a hearing that happened on April 18. Lo and behold, it turned out that Florida law enforcement agencies had just decided to ignore the temporary restraining order, which forbade Florida for enforcing SB 4C. According to local reporting, Florida’s lawyers argued bizarrely that the injunction did not include law enforcement in Florida, even though law enforcement in Florida are plainly tasked with enforcing Florida law—indeed, I’m pretty sure they’re the only ones with that power.
DeSantis has been clear that he wants Florida to be as anti-immigrant as possible. Every sheriff’s office in the state has 287(g) agreements, as do many city police departments, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and state police. In late February, before the injunction went into theoretical effect, the governor gave a speech about how he wanted every law enforcement agency to enter into a 287g agreement and he touted the efficacy of SB 4C. (Interestingly, the video of this speech, which I linked to in a piece I wrote for The Bulwark, seems to have been scrubbed from the internet.)
In that speech, Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey, the poster child for anti-immigrant policing, announced,
We are ready to roll. These new tools, these new resources that you’ve [DeSantis] given us through this newly passed state law gives us exactly what we need to be a force multiplier for our federal partners…If somebody’s in the state of Florida that’s here in our country illegally, this new law [SB 4C] gives us the ability to hold them accountable and take them in, sir, and we appreciate it.
287g agreements are contractual arrangements by local law enforcement to cooperate with ICE. There are two basic forms. The “jail enforcement model” allows jailers, usually sheriffs, to act as ICE agents inside the jail. Practically, this means that deputies are tasked with interrogating arrestees and then notifying ICE if they think someone is potentially deportable. (There is also the “warrant service officer” model, which is similar in outcome to the “jail enforcement” model although it uses a different legal mechanism; as a result, I don’t usually discuss it in detail because it gets too confusing. Suffice to say, every jail in Florida has either a jail enforcement model or warrant service officer model ALTHOUGH there is evidence that the training is backed up, so not all jails have trained staff to implement these agreements.)
The other agreement is the “task force” style, which is most infamous for being abused by ex-sheriff Joe Arpaio. Task force agreements mean that deputies (or police officers) can act as ICE agents in the streets, stopping people and interrogating them as to their immigration status. Documents I have obtained show that the task force model training is now being done online as a 40-hour training, so they are going into effect faster than the others. This is new under Trump. (All other 287g trainings are in person, which is why there are delays.) Also, It largely results in massive racial profiling. 287g agreements have proliferated since Trump took office in January, as the scholar Austin Kocher has noted. Every sheriff’s office in Florida now has a “task force” agreement as do many local and state agencies. Florida International University, in Miami, even signed a 287g agreement, as, apparently, have most state universities.
While sheriffs may argue otherwise, the office is a creature of state law, which means that states can legislate them. (As I often point out, almost every state legislates the pensions in their sheriffs’ offices, with no argument.) This is not the same as saying states are liable for the actions of their sheriffs’ offices; rather, because those offices are created in state constitutions, states can regulate them. (States can also regulate things like requirements to become sworn law enforcement officers, how officers are decertified, etc.)
Florida, in particular, exercises a great deal of control over sheriffs’ offices. For one thing, there is a provision in Florida law that enables sheriffs to appeal their budgetary decisions to the state, in the event local authorities decide to reduce their budget. The governor of Florida, now DeSantis, also has the power to remove sheriffs for pretty much any reason he likes. This means that elected sheriffs simply are more subject to the whims of the state executive than they are in other states.
The Florida laws, alongside various executive pronouncements and a new State Board of Immigration Enforcement (led by the guy who did the flights of immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard) as well as a State Immigration Enforcement Council (led by Sheriff Grady Judd), have generated confusion amongst law enforcement in the state. For example, one city in Miami-Dade County has asked courts to clarify whether or not local police departments are required to enter into 287g agreements. Many have, but must they? Unclear. It was even unclear to sheriffs, evidently – the new Miami-Dade sheriff (Miami-Dade did not have a sheriff until 2024) initially announced her intent not to participate in “mass deportations,” only to walk that back and enter into 287g agreements like every other department. Some of this may also be the influence of the Florida Sheriffs Association, which wields a great deal of power.
It is clear that the mania to deport more people means that many American citizens are getting swept up. And they aren’t the blonde-hair and blue-eyed Americans either; for some reason, there’s never a mistake like that made. There have been recent reports of people simply disappearing, which, unfortunately does not surprise me. When people are arrested by local law enforcement and turned over to ICE or Border Patrol, where do they go? It’s just not obvious to me. Data shows that they aren’t all in immigration detention, despite the administration’s best efforts to do so. People are plainly being released or, worse case, being sent elsewhere…somewhere?
As a Floridian myself, I can say confidently that this state never ceases to find new ways to be even more bigoted, corrupt, despicable, environmentally destructive and appalling than they already were the year before.
The most infuriating part for me however, is that a significant majority of the ass-brains that I share this state with, proudly and cluelessly go out and vote for the same corrupt, dishonest, and bigoted trash in election after election. The same trash politicians that intentionally write laws that further screw over those voters and their families and communities no less.
THAT special kinda stupid clearly demonstrates the democracy and society destroying power of the conservative propaganda machine and the GOP's endless streams of corporate and special interest dark money...
Which is why they’re replacing valuable migrant workers with children, even legally allowing 14 yo’s to work overnight on weekends and 16-17 yo’s to work overnight during the school week. This is sick! Good people come here to work hard and give their kids a better life, but we send them away and keep depraved adults who want to exploit children. I’d much prefer living with the courage and sacrifice of migrants to the selfishness and greed of citizens. What’s happened to us?