The hard-fought, controversial and pricey new Florida law aimed at supporting President Donald Trump’s efforts to round up and deport illegal immigrants may have little, if any, visible impact on the day-to-day operations of the largest law enforcement agencies in Broward and Palm Beach counties.
That doesn’t mean the Broward Sheriff’s Office or Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office are flouting the law — praised by Gov. Ron DeSantis as “really, really significant” — or thumbing their noses at the governor.
As they juggle multiple legal, law enforcement and political priorities, Sheriffs Gregory Tony in Broward and Ric Bradshaw in Palm Beach County said their departments are already doing what the new law requires.
The agencies already cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the sheriffs said, including alerting ICE to illegal immigrants in the county jails and turning them over to the feds. And the agencies support ICE, if requested, when the federal agency conducts raids and other enforcement actions.
What isn’t happening, Tony and Bradshaw said, is deployment of deputies to locate and round up illegal immigrants who haven’t committed crimes other than being in the U.S. illegally.
“There’s no organized sweeps with us going on as far as just people that are here illegally,” Bradshaw said. The sheriff said in an interview he has visited Hispanic groups throughout the county with that message.
“You don’t need to be afraid. If you’re not a bad guy, you haven’t committed a crime or you’re not one of the people that’s here illegally that’s a convicted murderer, there’s no problem,” Bradshaw said.
Tony was emphatic when asked about the new law during an appearance before the Broward Legislative Delegation.
One thing that won’t be happening is creation of a new force of “task force” officers, allowed under federal law and encouraged by the new state law, Tony said.
“Is there an expansion of these programs? Is the sheriff now diving in and saying I’m going to make 150 task force officers to work with ICE? The answer is: absolutely not. I didn’t sign up to be ICE. My patch doesn’t say ICE. My patch is Broward County. I’m a constitutional officer. I work for the 2 million people in this county,” Tony said.
Sign on
DeSantis said this past week that all the state’s 67 sheriffs had signed agreement with ICE that formalized their cooperation with the federal agency and put them in compliance with the new state law.
He’s been touting the new law at appearances across the state.
“If you look at what we’ve done to support the immigration mission, no other state has even come close to doing what Florida has done to put itself in the fight. We’re assisting, we are going to help enforce the law. We are going to help with the removal of illegal aliens,” DeSantis said. “I think everyone now is glad that we got the strongest legislation in the country passed, signed, and then executed in record time.”
DeSantis, speaking at an event called to highlight immigration enforcement, said the law “will lead to street-level enforcement operations.”
Sheriff Wayne Ivey of Brevard County, who appeared with DeSantis at the Homestead Air Reserve Base, said the new law would have a profound effect — suggesting that it would be more far-reaching than what was described by Tony and Bradshaw.
“These new tools, these new resources that you’ve given us through this newly passed state law gives us exactly what we need to be a force multiplier for our federal partners, and that’s what this really boils down to. It is a force multiplier,” Ivey said.
While Bradshaw and Tony said their agencies are focused on people in the country illegally who have committed other crimes, Ivey highlighted a broader application that isn’t limited to people who have committed other offenses.
“If somebody is in our country illegally, they’re going back. If somebody’s in the state of Florida, that’s here in our country illegally, this new law gives us the ability to hold them accountable and to take them in, and we appreciate it. We are blessed,” Ivey said.
One reason for what appears to be a disconnect between what different sheriffs are saying reflects what the large agencies — Broward and Palm Beach are the second and fourth most populous counties, respectively, in the state — are already doing.
“It’d be different if it was going to be something that we haven’t done before or we weren’t doing or it was going to change what we always intend to do. But it doesn’t do that. It just kind of formalizes what we’re already doing,” Bradshaw said. “Usually the bigger agencies, they’re already doing stuff like that anyhow, so it just formalizes the process.”
And that’s why Tony said people shouldn’t expect a big change in the way BSO operates. “Everyone calm down and take a deep breath. We’ve been doing that for years. They just put a title on it and say now you have to do it for some sheriffs who are not doing it.”
Their stands reflect what Tony and Bradshaw said when they were running for reelection last year and candidate Trump was promising “the largest deportation in the history of our country.” The sheriffs said then that devoting deputies for immigration roundups was both unworkable from a practical standpoint given staffing and other responsibilities, and would erode public trust in their agencies among some communities. A lack of trust could make people less likely to seek help in emergencies.
Terry Renna/AP
Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw at a 2020 news conference. (AP Photo/Terry Renna)
Supporting ICE
The sheriffs made a distinction between what federal ICE agents are doing and what their deputies are doing on immigration enforcement.
Both said county deputies would support ICE operations, when requested.
ICE doesn’t necessarily always call on local law enforcement for support. But when it does, Tony said, “Everyone needs to understand, I’m a law enforcement officer. ICE personnel that are out there serving this country, they’re law enforcement officers. … It’s about enforcing the laws and protecting our people. So when ICE comes through this community, and they’re knocking on the door and they’re about to arrest somebody for a warrant for murder or some gang banger and they need law enforcement support, I’m not having an officer or agent die in this county because I’m playing politics.”
Tony said it’s essential for BSO deputies to support ICE when requested. “We will not go overzealous and become them, but I’ve had two federal agents die in this county since I’ve been sheriff,” he said.
One of those deaths, Special Agent Daniel Alfin of the FBI, who was killed in a 2021 ambush in Sunrise while executing a search warrant, affected Tony personally. Tony said the FBI agent’s brother, David Alfin, was his partner for seven years when they both worked for the Coral Springs Police Department.
Tony said there could be an instance in which deputies in the field find they can’t support something ICE is doing. “If there’s something that stands out where there’s a violation of our principles and my expectations and standards, they will walk away and ICE will be left to deal with this on their own,” he said.
In Palm Beach County, “we’ve always worked with ICE,” Bradshaw said.
The sheriff said his priority would be working with ICE to arrest members of gangs, such as Tren de Aragua, or TDA, which is based in Venezuela and Bradshaw said has a presence in Miami. “Those are the people we’re going to go after,” he said.
Still, Bradshaw said that does not mean ICE agents won’t be seeking out and detaining people who are in the U.S. illegally and haven’t committed other crimes. And ICE may not “call us all the time if they decide to go deport people for some reason. Or if we go into a house and we’re after somebody that’s a really bad guy and there’s four or five illegals in there, ICE may take them as kind of collateral damage because they’re there with the bad people.”
Compliance
At the Homestead event with Ivey and an official of the Department of Homeland Security, DeSantis had a warning for any recalcitrant Florida officials.
“I have authority, if you don’t live up to your responsibilities to assist, you could be suspended and removed from office. But we didn’t have any sheriff drag their feet. They all got on board and signed these agreements, so all they’ve got to do is live up to those and I think they’re going to be in really, really, really good shape,” he said.
During a December 2023 CNN town hall when he was running for the Republican presidential nomination, DeSantis was asked to name his favorite Florida elected Democrat. He cited both Bradshaw and Tony as examples of the “good ones.”
Tony has been elected twice after DeSantis appointed him in 2019 when the governor suspended the previous sheriff, Scott Israel.
“We’re going to stay in compliance with the law,” Tony said the day before DeSantis’ comments. “There’s a lot of laws that I don’t agree with, but I’m the chief law enforcement officer, not the chief legislator, so I can’t write these things and some of them, even when I don’t like them, I have to enforce them.”
Tony said he still has the authority to run his agency.
“Whatever the state decides to legislate and put into play, great. But I’m not going to be told how to do my job. And there’s a lot of autonomy still left in that current legislation. No one said what the number is in that legislation. I will make the call on that,” he said.
Bradshaw, a Democrat reelected last year to his sixth term, also isn’t challenging DeSantis.
He has appeared with DeSantis in support of many of his initiatives, joining him for a Jan. 30 roundtable discussion on illegal immigration in Palm Beach County, where the sheriff declared, “I trust the governor to do the right thing, to protect the people in the state.” He was one of a couple of dozen sheriffs in the audience at the Homestead event.
State Rep. Marie Woodson, D-Hollywood, chair of the Broward Legislative Delegation, was the person who asked Tony to address the immigration law. “He’s a law enforcer. He’s supposed to enforce the law. However, he understands the humanity in all of this,” she said in an interview.
“I have people calling me day and night. They’re afraid. They’re scared for themselves. What I’m hoping for in this whole thing, people who are here who are committing crimes, I think they are the ones they should be addressing at this time and not people who are working to make a living or people who cannot go back to where they came from,” Woodson said.
State money
Neither Tony nor Bradshaw expects the $250 million of state money allocated to support immigration enforcement would flow into their agencies.
And there was uncertainty about what applying for the money would entail — DeSantis said the state would soon develop plans for using the $250 million — but Bradshaw said he doesn’t expect to seek to hire new personnel to comply with the law’s requirements, which he said makes it unlikely he’d apply.
Tony was cautious. “I’ve learned in this world you don’t get anything for free and starting to absorb funds that we don’t need may put the sheriff’s office in a position where now we’re obligated to comply with some state or federal elements, and I’m gonna be very careful about doing that.”
Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Bluesky, Threads, Facebook and Mastodon.
Originally Published: