Fla. Sheriffs Agree to Help Feds with Immigration Enforcement

All 67 county sheriffs in Florida have now entered into agreements with federal authorities that will lead to “street-level” immigration enforcement, Gov. Ron DeSantis said.

DeSantis’s announcement Wednesday evening at the Homestead Air Force Base in Miami-Dade County comes days after the Florida Sheriff’s Association said every county jail in the state has entered into agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that will give local officers some immigration authority.

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, the Warrant Service Officer model and the Task Force Model. The last model is what each of Florida’s county sheriffs have now agreed to as of Wednesday and is an arm of the program that DeSantis said was “dormant” under former President Joe Biden’s administration.

The Task Force Model gives local law enforcement agencies the ability to “enforce limited immigration authority with ICE oversight during their routine police duties,” according to ICE. The other two agreements give local law enforcement authority to act with immigration duties only inside jails.

But there have previously been concerns with the Task Force Model, according to a January overview of 287(g) by the American Immigration Council. It was “discontinued” in 2012 after ICE said other enforcements were a “more efficient use of resources,” according to the overview.

The nonprofit cited research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that determined the Task Force Models in that state more than a decade ago “were primarily used to target offenders who posed no threat to public safety or individuals with no criminal record.”

The Task Force Model was, in part, discontinued over concerns about how it was impacting local police’s community relations with immigrants, the American Immigration Council said.

ICE’s updated data as of Wednesday shows that the Task Force Model is the type of program with the fewest agreements, with only seven states that have them. Nationally, at least 239 law enforcement agencies have entered into agreements for one of the three models, the data updated Wednesday afternoon shows.

The Broward Sheriff’s Office since 2019 has had a 287(g) agreement with ICE but for the Warrant Service Officer program, which allows deputies to serve and execute warrants on immigrants held in the county’s jail. Both the Broward and the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Offices will now operate the Warrant Service Officer program and Task Force Model.

Florida is the only state nationwide where each county has agreements for that specific model under 287(g), DeSantis said.

DeSantis was joined in Homestead by Department of Homeland Security Senior Counselor Keith Pearson, former sheriff of St. Lucie County, and Larry Keefe, executive director of the newly created State Board of Immigration Enforcement. At least a dozen other county sheriffs were in the audience.

President Donald Trump’s administration has been aggressively enforcing immigration policies since he took office in January to carry out his promised mass deportation, including ending Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans and Haitians, detaining migrants at Guantanamo Bay, freezing federal funding to NGOs “that facilitate illegal immigration” and ramping up the military’s involvement along the border.

Homeland Security is citing a drastic increase in arrests over the last month, stating in a news release Wednesday that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has arrested more than 20,000 people since January, “a 627% increase in monthly arrests.” Secretary Kristi Noem also announced Tuesday that DHS is creating a process for people in the country illegally to register themselves in an effort to “compel them to leave the country voluntarily.”

DeSantis has routinely touted the state as leading the way in cooperating with Trump’s immigration crackdown nationally. DeSantis earlier this month signed into law broad immigration enforcement legislation.

The New York Times reported that Trump’s administration is gearing up to use military sites across the country to detain migrants, with Fort Bliss, near El Paso, Texas, serving as an early example.

Asked if the Homestead Air Reserve Base possibly could be used, DeSantis said: “… If they ask us to supplement and we have the wherewithal to do it, my view is going to be we should do it. We should help.”

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