After facing criticism from some local activists over dragging their feet, Orange County commissioners will formally vote to change the county’s agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement next week. This will effectively limit the amount of time that the jail is contractually required to hold immigrants detained by ICE, from 72 hours to 48 hours.
Orange County commissioners and the county Mayor Jerry Demings voted last month to remove ICE from the county’s longstanding agreement with the U.S. Marshals Service, known as the intergovernmental services agreement, or IGSA — in part due to the hundreds of thousands of dollars it has been costing the county to honor it, with, so far, no federal reimbursement.
This agreement has, for decades, allowed certain federal agencies, including the FBI, to detain federal inmates in the Orange County Jail for a limited amount of time. This agreement has allowed ICE to keep people accused of violating federal immigration law there since county leaders amended the agreement in 2011.
Under Florida statutes, the Orange County Jail is required to effectively cooperate with ICE and to house ICE detainees temporarily, under either an IGSA or what’s known as a basic ordering agreement — the more common option in Florida.
“Some form of an agreement is mandatory under Florida law,” Orange County deputy attorney Georgiana Holmes previously told commissioners, as they sought legal advice on their options. “The statute does not allow the county to operate without one.”
Facing pressure from local activists and labor unions organized with the grassroots Immigrants Are Welcome Here Coalition, however, Orange County leaders voted to remove ICE from their IGSA in April and to move forward with establishing a BOA instead. The BOA, in contrast, limits the detention of immigrants on behalf of ICE in the local jail from 72 hours to 48 hours.
The detention of U.S. immigrants, including immigrants living and working in the U.S. under temporary visas, has sharply increased over the last year and a half under the leadership of U.S. President Donald Trump and the mass deportation agenda pursued by anti-immigration hawks in his federal administration.
The Orlando music community recently rallied around local bar and music venue owner Cleon Williams, affectionately known as “Uncle Lou” of Uncle Lou’s Entertainment Hall on Mills Avenue, after Williams was detained by ICE in the Orange County Jail earlier this month.
Williams, a Jamaican national who entered the U.S. in 1987 under a now-expired visa, was transferred last week to the Baker County Detention Center, a federal ICE facility a few hours north of Orlando. The facility has been accused by the American Civil Liberties Union of a “long history of human rights abuses and horrific conditions.” Williams, since his initial booking, has also been charged with a misdemeanor for allegedly selling liquor to undercover state officers for the Florida Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco at his venue without a liquor license.
“Even with the recent vote to cancel the ICE portion of IGSA, people are still being held with no end in sight, with the IGSA still being honored,” said Emma De Los Santos, a member of the Party of Socialism and Liberation, speaking during a public Orange County board of county commissioners meeting earlier this month.
“People are still being held with no end in sight.”
Emma De Los Santos, speaking during the public comment portion of the Orange County board of county commissioners’ May 19 meeting.
De Los Santos, referring to a known problem of ICE agents re-booking immigrants after the 72-hour period (or simply not picking them up from the jail), was one of several PSL members to attend the May 19 meeting to demand county leaders release Williams. “Any and all concessions you make to ICE will be heavily shouldered by the most marginalized people in Orange County,” De Los Santos warned.
Orange County leaders have grappled with their options on limiting collaboration with ICE since the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants began rattling the community upon Trump’s return to the White House last January. Since then, they’ve faced threats of removal from office by Florida’s Attorney General and Gov. Ron DeSantis, should they fail to demonstrate “best efforts” to support federal immigration enforcement, as required under Florida law.
Under the BOA — an agreement held by an estimated 90 percent of Florida counties — the federal government will reimburse the county $50 per detainee, for a period of up to 48 hours. Under the IGSA, reimbursement was $88 per person, still a figure far shy of the estimated $180 it costs for the jail to house and care for detainees each day.
But according to Danny Banks, the county’s public safety director, the county could request an additional $100 per person, on average, through a state grant program under the BOA, which would notably increase the amount of reimbursement the county receives. That state grant program expires in June 2027, however, after which the county would rely on federal reimbursement.
“Ultimately, as long as the state grant is in place, we would realize about $25 less per day under a BOA than we would under an IGSA,” Banks explained, since federal officials last month agreed to increase their reimbursement to $125 a day under the IGSA. “That’s just a decision point for you all.”
A benefit of the BOA, however, is that it would “potentially” allow the jail to release ICE detainees after 48 hours, if ICE either doesn’t pick them up or fails to file a petition in court to detain them in the jail longer. “If none of those other actions occurred … within that 48-hour period, it may give us the opportunity to release them,” Banks explained last month. “So that would be the advantage to the BOA.”
This ended up being a preferable option for county commissioners, including outgoing Orange County Mayor Demings, a former sheriff who is currently running for governor as a Democrat.
“I want ICE out of Orange County, I want them out of our jail, I want them out of our neighborhoods,” District 1 county commissioner Nicole Wilson publicly admitted during last month’s board meeting.
“The challenge is, we still have this state law,” Demings said in response.
State preemption laws, in many different areas of local governing, have for years served as a thorn in the side of Florida’s local government leaders — blocking everything from local laws on paid sick leave (at the behest of the state’s largest corporations) and local heat protections for outdoor workers to a ban on rent control or sleeping on public property.
District 5 county commissioner Kelly Martinez Semrad admitted, “There’s no option here that is going to satisfy what everybody, I think, on this board would like to do, and what the community would like to do.” Switching to a BOA, she said, “is the closest that we can get.”
Orange County commissioners are scheduled to vote Tuesday to remove ICE from the IGSA, accept the federal government’s new $125 reimbursement offer for the IGSA sans ICE), and vote on a separate agenda item to establish a BOA with ICE.
A county spokesperson confirmed to Orlando Weekly that the amended IGSA and BOA “will not become effective until they are countersigned by ICE and the U.S. Marshals.” The county did not have an estimate for how long it might take for those countersignatures to come in.
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