In the nine months since the Trump administration revived a controversial immigration enforcement program, partnerships between local police and ICE to detain and arrest undocumented people have exploded across Florida.
Palm Beach County leads South Florida in the number of agreements that Gov. Ron DeSantis touted would lead to “street-level” enforcement.
Delray Beach Police was the lone major department that, up until Nov. 4, had not signed into a 287(g) agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; the rest signed the same agreement this spring and summer, according to a public database maintained by ICE.
Under the 287(g) program, ICE operates three different models that give local law enforcement the ability to act in some capacity as immigration officers: the Jail Enforcement Model and the Warrant Service Officer model, both of which are used in jails, and the Task Force Model, the “force multiplier” arm of the program that has grown exponentially since Trump took office.
The widespread signing of 287(g) Task Force Model agreements means that dozens of officers and deputies in South Florida and hundreds across the state are authorized to carry out some immigration duties in the course of their everyday routine police work, including executing arrest warrants for immigration violations and questioning people about their immigration status.
In February, the Task Force Model was the least commonly used of the three, and only seven states had that type of agreement, ICE’s data shows. As of Nov. 20, a total of 620 police agencies across 34 states have signed into a Task Force Model agreement.
More than 300 of the agreements are in Florida alone, ICE’s list shows, and about 3,100 people in Florida have been arrested under the 287(g) program, according to a database maintained by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
While all but one small department in Palm Beach County now have Task Force Model agreements, many large police agencies in Broward County still have not opted into one, ICE’s database shows. Some that have, including the Broward Sheriff’s Office, referred questions about enforcement and statistics under the agreement to ICE, whose spokespersons did not respond to emails seeking information within the last week.
A total of 19 out of 20 police agencies in Palm Beach County currently have Task Force Model agreements. Meanwhile, only six out of 17 have entered one in Broward County and nine out of 31 in Miami-Dade, the ICE database shows.
Local South Florida law enforcement agencies receive $2 million for immigration enforcement
Immigration attorneys told the Sun Sentinel there is no state law that mandates local law enforcement enter a 287(g) Task Force Model agreement with ICE. But the few cities in Florida that tried to oppose it received letters from Attorney General James Uthmeier, warning that failing to approve it is illegal and could result in the elected officials being removed from office. The mayor of South Miami sued in an attempt to get a direct answer about what the law requires.
“Any quasi-careful reading of the law, you come to the conclusion that there is no state mandate to enter into Task Force Model 287(g), but the threat to remove is enough to get people to enter into those agreements, even if they agree that there is no mandate,” said Paul Chavez, Litigation Director for Americans for Immigrant Justice, a nonprofit law firm and immigration policy watchdog group.
As of October, there’s a financial incentive for local police to enter an agreement. ICE will fully reimburse participating agencies for the annual salary and benefits of each trained officer and will offer agencies “performance awards” each quarter, the Department of Homeland Security said.
Task Force Model agreements were disbanded by the federal government in 2012 after racial concerns surfaced. Advocates say that they lead to racial profiling and fear among the immigrant community. The most recent uproar has been in Lake Worth Beach, where more than a dozen residents pleaded with elected officials to renege on the agreement at an October special meeting.
Immigration advocates protest ICE agreements outside sheriffs’ convention in Broward
Delray Beach signs on
Delray Beach Police signed a memorandum of agreement for the 287(g) Task Force Model on Nov. 4. An assistant city attorney discussed the agreement with an ICE official on Oct. 6 and afterward asked for a copy of the contract, according to an email obtained by the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
City Manager Terrence Moore told the Sun Sentinel that the decision was made in line with the statewide “trend” of law enforcement agencies signing the agreements.
“Bottom line, given the fact that we were able to get our arms around the matter legally over the last several weeks, as well as examining the trends of all other local law enforcement entities throughout the state of Florida, and quite frankly the nation, Delray Beach working closely with the office of the chief of police made the decision to proceed accordingly,” he said.
The agreement was not publicly discussed at the Nov. 4 commission meeting or Tuesday’s meeting. The mayor did not respond to voicemails and an email seeking comment for this article. A police department spokesperson did not respond to an email seeking information about the decision or how many officers will be trained to carry out immigration duties.
Required by law or ‘sanctuary city’?
Two cities in Florida earlier this year attempted to prevent their local police departments from partnering with ICE under the Task Force Model, Fort Myers and Key West. Both received letters from Uthmeier that said they made themselves “sanctuary” cities in so doing, a violation of state law. Both cities have signed 287(g) agreements.
After the Fort Myers commission in March had a tied vote on the agreement, resulting in it not passing, South Miami Mayor Javier Fernández filed a lawsuit against DeSantis and Uthmeier a week later seeking that the judge declare that 287(g) agreements are not mandated and that it is not against the state’s law on sanctuary policies if a city does not enter one, referencing in the complaint the Fort Myers vote and the letter the commission received from Uthmeier.
The lawsuit alleged that the state at the time was putting “political pressure” on local law enforcement agencies to sign 287(g) agreements, pointing to repeated emails from the Florida Police Chiefs Association to various police departments that “increased in urgency” over time, and that included a fillable template for the Task Force Model agreement.
Miramar Police, one of the Broward agencies without a 287(g) agreement, received the same repeated emails in March, according to public records obtained by the Sun Sentinel. The police department in July also received information from the African American Mayors Association that warned that any city without an agreement could be “targeted” by Trump’s administration.
Chief Delrish Moss in a statement shared with the Sun Sentinel said his department has not entered the agreement because it isn’t mandatory.
“If the day comes when this becomes a required partnership or there is a directive for municipal agencies to participate, we will follow the law accordingly,” Moss said. “For now, we remain focused on our core mission of public safety and on maintaining the trust and confidence of the community we serve.”
At an Aug. 21 hearing in the South Miami lawsuit, attorneys for DeSantis and Uthmeier told Circuit Judge Jonathan Sjostrom that cities are not required to enter 287(g) agreements but rather actively opposing one can be a violation of state law, according to a transcript of the hearing.
Richard Rosengarten, an attorney for South Miami, argued at the hearing that the state isn’t being so nuanced outside of the courtroom. The attorney also cited the letter Sheriff Gregory Tony received from Uthmeier in June after Tony said at a public meeting that immigration was not a priority for BSO, according to the transcript.
“But there’s something that the defendants just can’t escape, which is that if the defendants wanted to obligate municipalities to enter into a 287(g) agreement, it knew how to do so, but didn’t,” Rosengarten told the judge during the hearing.
The judge dismissed the lawsuit in September, calling it “premature.”
PBSO says racial profiling ‘absolutely not tolerated’
More than a dozen Lake Worth Beach residents described to city commissioners at an Oct. 6 meeting and to the Sun Sentinel the consequences they have seen from immigration enforcement in the community where just under 50% of the population is Hispanic or Latino: Children who are not going to school out of fear, neighbors who they no longer see outside of their homes, people in work trucks being pulled over and an increased Florida Highway Patrol presence in residential areas where they rarely saw troopers before.
Commissioner Christopher McVoy, who has been a vocal critic of some aspects of immigration enforcement, told the Sun Sentinel he is concerned about the “credibility hit” to PBSO in Lake Worth Beach because of the cooperation with ICE and worries the community could be less safe if residents are afraid to call deputies.
“If the perception is out there that they’re involved with ICE, you already are going to have a diminishment of local law enforcement at that point,” he said. “Because people don’t trust them then. The whole label of serve and protect — you have now a lot of people who don’t feel served and protected.”
A total of 114 Palm Beach County Sheriff’s deputies have completed the mandatory training to act under the 287(g) Task Force Model agreement, the agency said in a statement to the Sun Sentinel. The Sheriff’s Office has also received state funding to buy “Rapid ID Devices,” which “will help to positively identify” people with final orders for removal.
“We work closely with ICE in order to maintain a more focused approach on those individuals that are wanted in their database,” PBSO’s statement said. “Many individuals in the immigrant community are not being sought for deportation, due to various legal reasons, so good communication and strong coordination is essential.”
At the meeting, Lake Worth Beach Capt. Terrence Carn vowed to residents and the commission that racial profiling is “absolutely not tolerated” and that PBSO is not “running around doing raids.” He said there are “thousands” of people who have administrative immigration arrest warrants, and some of those undocumented people are being “picked up.”
“That’s it. But we’re not doing raids. We’re not targeting people. We’re not racial profiling people. We don’t do that. We’re not doing that,” Carn said. “I can say that for myself, as the captain in this district, we don’t do racial profiling.”
Research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill a few years before the Task Force Model arm of the program was disbanded in 2012 showed that the agreements in that state at the time “were primarily used to target offenders who posed no threat to public safety or individuals with no criminal record,” according to a January overview of the program by the American Immigration Council. In 2011, the Department of Justice concluded a lengthy civil rights investigation into the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office in Arizona and shut down its 287(g) program after finding evidence of discriminatory policing, including unlawful traffic stops, detentions and arrests of Latinos.
“We saw a lot of abuse. The federal government decided that it was not worth it, creating this divide and gap between law enforcement and the immigrant community,” attorney Chavez said.
That gap is now evident in communities with a 287(g) agreement, he said, where people are afraid to talk to local police or to “engage in civic life.”
“As they withdraw, that gives them less options and that makes everybody less safe,” he said. “I think what we’ve seen is a huge increase in racial profiling, police trying to figure out somebody’s immigration status. What happens is they stop Black and brown people and they ask about it. And they’re ill equipped to do so.”