Credit: Photo by Dave Decker

Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings and the county’s corrections chief have rejected a proposal from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to have local correctional staff transport federal ICE detainees to the new Everglades immigration detention center, Alligator Alcatraz.

The new detention camp, which critics compare to a “concentration camp,” is located more than 230 miles (upward of four hours) away from the Orange County Jail.

“I will not agree for our correction staff to transport federal inmates to other facilities,” said Demings during a discussion of a proposed amendment to the county’s existing agreement with ICE during a county commission meeting Tuesday.

“That’s the federal government’s responsibility — it’s not our responsibility to do that,” Demings argued. Demings, who’s term-limited from running again for mayor in the Democratic-leaning county, formerly served as Orange County sheriff before being elected mayor, and served as Orlando’s first African American police chief a few years before that.

Local corrections chief Louis Quinones admitted such a service would “negatively impact” the correctional department’s current resources and capacity. He said he wrote a letter to the Florida Sheriff’s Association in late June, informing them of the county’s position, and got a response “that they understood our position” shortly after.

The Florida Sheriff’s Association forwarded a proposed addendum from ICE to all sheriffs and county jails for signature in early June. The addendum — completely voluntary for recipients like Orange County to sign — sought to authorize local corrections staff to transport ICE detainees to “ICE-approved detention facilities,” according to government documents. Neither federal nor state law requires Orange County to opt in.

“We did not sign that addendum because we were not required to by law,” said Chief Quinones. “We want our correctional staff inside the Orange County Jail doing what they are entrusted to do,” he added.

At the same time, Demings and Orange County commissioners also moved to negotiate changes to their current contract with ICE, known as an intergovernmental services agreement. That current agreement, approved by the County Commission with just two dissenters this past March, allows ICE to hold people accused of violating federal immigration law in a local jail for up to 72 hours before ICE transfers them to another detention facility.

Orange County’s jail is one of just six such facilities with this agreement in place across the state, according to immigration rights advocates who have urged the county commission to repeal the IGSA. Under the current IGSA, ICE agents are authorized to arrest and detain people from neighboring counties — some as far as 100 miles away, per the Orlando Sentinel — and bring them to Orange County Jail.

All of this comes at a cost to taxpayers — and we’re not just talking about the emotional or moral toll of ripping families of mixed legal status apart. Each ICE detainee incarcerated in Orange County Jail costs the county roughly $145 per day, according to county officials, while the federal government reimburses the county just $88. “We are currently in the final process of seeking to increase our reimbursement rate with the U.S. Marshal Service,” said Quinones.

A coalition of community members who support immigrant rights and due process, known as the Immigrants Are Welcome Here coalition, has been pressuring Orange County leaders to repeal its IGSA with ICE for months, consistently showing up to county board meetings.

Advocates with the Hope CommUnity Center, for instance, raised concerns that those detained by ICE were being “disappeared” in the jail’s database, preventing loved ones from identifying the location of family members or others they believed were being detained. In response, Demings directed the jail to begin identifying those being detained on allegations of federal immigration violations in their online, public database.

“It’s very difficult for people to know what their rights are if there’s no one available to know where they are and how to represent them,” Hope CommUnity Center organizing director Ericka Gomez-Tejeda told Orlando Weekly in June.

Related

‘You can’t sanitize cages’

More than a dozen people showed up to the Board of County Commissioners meeting Tuesday to call on the Orange County to repeal the IGSA its involvement in ICE detention operations.

Advocates say the voluntary agreement with ICE to hold its detainees isn’t something the county is required to have under law.

“Our communities are afraid,” said Sister Anna Kendrick, cofounder of the Hope CommUnity Center. “They’re not going to school, they’re not going to churches, they’re not going to the store. They’re living in fear, and it’s just unconscionable.”

The Trump administration set a goal in May for ICE agents to arrest 3,000 people per day, and ongoing legal challenges to efforts to strip immigrants from certain countries of their Temporary Protected Status (thus opening them up to potential removal orders) has caused confusion and fear in communities across Florida and the nation.

Local community member Maria, who declined to provide her last name, told Orlando Weekly and county leaders on Tuesday that her own nephew had been detained in Orange County Jail — after being arrested by ICE in neighboring Lake County — and was transported down to the so-called Alligator Alcatraz earlier this month.

The 21-year-old, whose name she withheld in order to protect him from potential retaliation, came to the U.S. as an unaccompanied minor from El Salvador. She told Orlando Weekly that his mother sent him here due to political turmoil that made her worry for her son’s safety back home. 

Related

“I cry daily watching our communities targeted and families torn apart,” said Tanya Martinez, another member of the Immigrants Are Welcome Here coalition and an organizer with Orlando 50501. “We cannot fuel the ICE machine or turn our local systems into a pipeline to Alligator Alcatraz … where due process goes to die.”

Alligator Alcatraz — a name coined by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier — is a detention camp built in the Florida Everglades in South Florida in just eight days’ time. Orlando-area state Rep. Anna Eskamani toured the camp with other state and Congressional lawmakers over the weekend, after suing the state for access.

They described chaotic and disturbing conditions within the detention camp, with 32 people packed into each cage of the facility. She told Orlando Weekly that the tour felt “incredibly scripted” and said their glimpse of detainees in a holding area, calling for help, was the “worst part” of the experience.

“At the end of the day, you can’t sanitize cages,” she said.

The agreement stays in place

Despite calls from the coalition for a full repeal or rescission of the county’s IGSA, county leaders opted to begin negotiations to modify rather than terminate the agreement entirely.

Commissioners were warned by their legal team that a termination could lead to negative consequences for the county, including threats to withhold the more than $100 million the county receives each year in federal funding assistance for programs related to early education, affordable housing and homelessness, and HIV prevention.

Commissioner Nicole Wilson, who was one of just two commissioners to vote against ratifying the county’s agreement with ICE in March, admitted it would be “devastating” to have to tell her constituents they’ve lost federal funds for local educational programming. “I don’t know what to say to that, except for that one cruelty doesn’t make up for another cruelty,” she said.

At the same time, the risk for losing out on funds is just that — it’s a risk, not a foregone certainty.

County assistant attorney Scott Shevenell explained to commissioners that the federal government cannot compel state or local governments to perform federal functions, under the U.S. Constitution. But the state could pass a law requiring the county’s participation in this ICE program, or the federal government could try to coerce Orange County to do so by withholding federal grant funds, regardless.

Corrections chief Quinones said the county could also be compelled to enter a “worse” agreement, such as a Basic Ordering Agreement, that would reduce the county’s reimbursement rate for housing ICE detainees from $88 to $25 for each person held.

Demings admitted that if problems come up during negotiations on modifying their IGSA, the county may be forced to reverse course. “If we find ourselves with any feedback where we’re unduly exposing ourselves to some other undesirable condition with federal funding … that’s something that we would bring back to the board at a later date for the board to be able to understand,” the mayor said.

Other municipalities in Florida that have dared to reject or otherwise threaten to reject voluntarily entering into agreements with ICE to aid the Trump administration’s mass deportation mission have been met with threats from state officials such as Uthmeier.

County commissioners in Key West, for example, voted to reject a voluntary agreement with ICE, before reversing course last week after getting threats of being removed from office from Uthmeier. Uthmeier also threatened members of Fort Myers City Council (and Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer) earlier this year, who similarly changed their tune on ICE cooperation shortly after.

“I know that you, our commissioners, have [been] put in a very difficult position,” community member Danielle Bonita told Orange County commissioners, speaking during public comment. “Do not say years from now that you were just complying with orders — say that you stood up for what’s right.”

Related

Subscribe to Orlando Weekly newsletters.

Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Bluesky | Or sign up for our RSS Feed

Related Stories

This article appears in Jul 9-15, 2025.

General news reporter for Orlando Weekly, with a focus on state and local government and workers' rights. You can find her bylines in Creative Loafing Tampa Bay, In These Times, and Facing South.