Hundreds of people in Orlando have rallied behind the message of removing federal immigration enforcement agents from the city’s streets — but according to the county’s legal team, the prospect of doing so, or even challenging federal immigration enforcement practices, is much more complicated.
After several hours of discussion, and a fiery public comment period, Orange County commissioners concluded their update on federal immigration-related concerns Tuesday with no formal action on the matter, but rather plans to continue exploring their legal options.
One of those options is drafting what would effectively be a symbolic resolution in opposition to a new immigrant detention facility in the county. Federal U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials reportedly want to develop a new, long-term detention center using an industrial warehouse located in southeast Orlando. It’s one of more than two dozen warehouse sites that are being eyed by federal officials for detention centers nationwide.
Blocking the development of a new detention center entirely, however, is out of the question, according to Orange County deputy attorney Georgiana Holmes, who cited both a state law and the U.S. Constitution as barriers.
“Under the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution, federal law takes precedent, and that limits how far state or local actions can go when they would affect the federal government’s ability to construct or operate detention facilities,” Holmes explained to the board of county commissioners.
Separately, a state law in Florida (SB 180) “places clear limits” on the county’s ability to adopt a moratorium to block a nonmunicipal detention facility, she added.
This clarification on their options came in direct response to District 1 county commissioner Nicole Wilson, who sent a memo to her fellow commissioners on Jan. 19 seeking to place a temporary ban on the development of nonmunicipal detention centers in Orange County — including, but not limited to, an ICE facility.
“A detention center will send a clear message to tourists … that they may not be welcome here and that we’re OK with their families being terrorized.”
This came after local media discovered last month that federal officials are reportedly eyeing an industrial warehouse in Lake Nona for what would be Central Florida’s first long-term ICE detention center.
Wilson, an environmental lawyer by trade, said it was her intention with the memo to act “quickly” after seeing reports of local leaders in other parts of the country — such as Kansas City — similarly stepping up to block new detention centers in their own communities.
“This has been something that all these local jurisdictions are really trying to grapple with and look for solutions,” she said, citing examples of opposition or actions taken by officials of all political stripes in states like Texas, Georgia, Virginia, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Utah.
According to Bloomberg, the Trump administration has said it needs more than 100,000 detention beds for men, women, and children accused of living in the country illegally. That’s if the administration wishes to reach Trump’s goal of deporting 1 million people per year.
During the public comment portion of Tuesday’s meeting, more than a dozen people (including local pastors) urged county leaders to find a way to take action to block a detention facility in Orange County, warning it could harm families, damage the environment and hurt tourism in a region that is economically dependent on it. Orange County is one of Florida’s tourism capitals, home to world-renowned attractions like Walt Disney World and Universal Orlando Resort.
“A detention center will send a clear message to tourists as well: a message that they may not be welcome here and that we’re OK with their families being terrorized,” said Ella Wood, political director of Unite Here Local 737, a hospitality union that represents 19,000 Central Florida tourism workers, including thousands of workers at Disney.
“Disney Dungeon? Whatever they call it, they’ll come up with some kind of name like Alligator Alcatraz,” another person pointed out during public comment, referencing the state immigration detention center built in the Florida Everglades last year. “People really don’t want to come here when there are masked men invading our schools or homes or hotels, harassing our people, our tourists, anyone with an accent.”
Federal immigration enforcement agents, tasked with carrying out President Trump’s mass deportation agenda, have tear-gassed high school students, abducted union organizers, fatally shot U.S. citizens Alex Pretti and Renee Good, and been given the green light by the U.S. Supreme Court to racially profile people during immigration stops.
What ‘best efforts’ must Orange County provide to aid ICE?
Members of the public also — as they have for months — urged county officials to file a lawsuit to seek legal clarification on the “best efforts” that Orange County is required by state law to take to support the enforcement of federal immigration law.
As it is, the term “best efforts” isn’t defined in state statutes. And Orange County is bleeding money (over $330,000 so far) from its intergovernmental services agreement with ICE that requires the county to temporarily house people arrested on federal immigration holds in the local Orange County Jail.
“As Orange County continues to cooperate with federal immigration authorities, that cooperation has placed measurable pressure on local resources, including jail space, staffing and operating costs,” Holmes, the county attorney, acknowledged.
But most Orange County officials, including mayor and gubernatorial candidate Jerry Demings, have remained wary to pursue litigation. That’s in part due to threats made by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier last year to remove them from office if they fail to demonstrate they’ve given their “best efforts” to aid ICE.
“This is not about avoiding litigation,” Holmes asserted. “It’s about ensuring if the county does go to court, it does so at the right time, for the right reasons, and with concrete factual records so that the county is on firm legal ground and the court can meaningfully determine what the law requires and what it does not.”
“Disney Dungeon?”
Immigrant rights advocates have urged county commissioners and the mayor to “be brave” and seek that legal clarification now, not later. “While we acknowledge their intent is to take a vote on this matter next month, the urgency of this matter merits immediate action,” Felipe Sousa Lazaballet, executive director of Hope CommUnity Center in Apopka, said in a statement after Tuesday’s meeting.
District 5 county commissioner Kelly Semrad, who has consistently stood alongside immigrant rights advocates, urged county leaders to at least set a timeline for when the public could expect to see action from leadership. “We really need to lay out a step-wise approach for the public to clearly understand that we’re not just saying it, we are actually doing it, and we have a threshold where, this is it, and they can hold us accountable,” she argued. “Because right now, they’re feeling like they have no control over what’s happening in their community.”
Mayor Demings, however, stressed that the public needs to be patient as the county’s legal team exhausts its options and goes through the appropriate legal process. The county Corrections Department, for instance, is currently seeking a higher reimbursement rate for the cost of detaining people in Orange County Jail on behalf of ICE — and has been waiting for action from the federal government on the issue since August.
Running a deficit
Currently, it costs about $180 per day to detain each person in the local jail, but the federal government is only reimbursing the county $88 per person, thus leaving local taxpayers on the hook for the rest — including for people arrested and transported to the jail from other surrounding counties.
Orange County corrections chief Louis Quinones said the U.S. Marshal Service (the federal agency in charge) has indicated that they are dealing with their own “staffing challenges” — hence the delay in processing and approving a higher reimbursement rate.
He said last week a local federal official informed him that their request “had been elevated to the executive management team for review.” But it’s unclear what that actually means and how long it could take for the full reimbursement to be approved.
Holmes said that there are certain administrative steps the legal team would need to exhaust before taking any further action to demand full reimbursement from the federal government. “Claims seeking money from the United States are subject to strict jurisdictional rules, and if filed, would likely have to be brought in the United States Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C.,” she explained.
In the meantime, Demings did write a letter to the feds last week, informing them that effective March 1, 2026, the jail will be limiting the number of people it will hold on behalf of ICE who are being detained for no other reason than an allegation of being in the country illegally (a civil, not criminal charge).
Effective next month, Demings said the jail will also eliminate the practice of “rebooking” ICE detainees. Under the county’s agreement with ICE, the county jail can only hold federal inmates for up to 72 hours before they must be transported elsewhere. But in practice, the county corrections department has been forced to admit that federal agents are instead taking people out of the jail and re-booking them back into the jail shortly after under a new booking number, artificially resetting this 72-hour clock.
“This practice strains [Orange County Corrections Department] resources, disrupts workflow, and circumvents the intended operation of the agreement,” Demings wrote in his letter to the feds.
In January, ICE booked 1,849 people into the Orange County Jail, according to corrections data, up from 550 people in October 2025. The number of people held in the jail solely on federal immigration holds — and no other local charges — increased nearly 300 percent, from 439 people in October to 1,684 people last month.
According to Quinones, the “rebooking” by ICE has dwindled since Demings sent his letter to local ICE officials on Feb. 3. Plus, the number of people held in the jail on no other local charges has also significantly decreased, he said.
“The fight is not over,” Demings argued during the meeting Tuesday, in response to pressure for county leaders to pursue litigation imminently. “At the end of the day, we want to be in a position where, if we go into litigation, we win,” he argued.
‘My community is living in fear’
In the meantime, locals say that Central Florida’s immigrant communities are confused, fearful, and uncertain of their safety. “My community is living in fear,” said Isaie Marc, a hospitality worker, Unite Here Local 737 union member, and U.S. citizen who immigrated to the country from Haiti himself 26 years ago. “Even people that have legal status [have] been questioned and targeted. That’s not right.”
Last month, the Trump administration sought to end federal protections (temporary protected status) that allow more than 300,000 Haitian immigrants to temporarily live in the U.S. lawfully. Jewish senior citizens at a senior living condo complex in South Florida, including Holocaust survivors, reportedly prepared for this move by asking if they could hide their Haitian care workers in their apartments to protect them from ICE (whom some have likened to the Gestapo).
A federal judge blocked the administration’s move to end TPS designation for Haitians a day before it was scheduled to expire. But the uncertainty has kept Haitian immigrants — and immigrants from other countries similarly living in the U.S. through TPS — on unstable footing.
“These are hardworking individuals,” said Mailyn Santana, a Brazilian immigrant and chief of staff for Hope CommUnity Center. She said she’s received dozens of calls from Brazilian community members “who have been detained and taken away from their families, their jobs and their communities.”
The vast majority, she said, have been detained due to being traced by their vehicle license plate, “and although they have no criminal history, they are being held without the opportunity for due process.”
Xiomary Rivera, an organizer with Unite Here Local 737, is Puerto Rican, but said that even as a U.S. citizen, “I feel targeted for how I look and speak.”
“In the last month, I have been pulled over three times by the law enforcement for no reason and no apparent traffic violation,” she told the board of county commissioners. The federal government’s aggressive immigration enforcement tactics, she said, aren’t just hurting undocumented people, “it’s hurting entire communities.”
“Haitians and Latinos are the backbone of the tourism workforce. I want to thank the commissioners who are trying to stand for us. We know you didn’t cause this, but we need you to act. Use every tool you have, try every angle,” she pleaded. “We need action, not silence.”
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