Orange County will limit the amount of time that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees can be held in the Orange County Jail, and will only hold such detainees if they have a criminal charge, under a new agreement approved by county leaders this week. The agreement still needs an OK from federal officials to take effect.
Under the county’s old agreement, known as an intergovernmental services agreement, the county jail was obligated to hold ICE detainees, regardless of whether they were facing any local criminal charges, for up to 72 hours — although advocates have said some were held longer, without consequence.
Under the new agreement with ICE, a basic ordering agreement, the county will only accept federal ICE detainees who have a criminal charge and will only hold them for up to 48 hours.
The intent of the change — if you ask the county — is to address immigration enforcement’s strains on staffing at the jail, resources, jail space, and the cost to local taxpayers to fund the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented and unauthorized immigrants.
Florida law requires the county government to have one of the two agreements with ICE — meaning, it’s not legally permissible for them to refuse any cooperation with the federal agency.
Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings said the change is “the result of this board’s action to maintain compliance with Florida law, while serving the best interests of the taxpayers of Orange County, surrounding our role in housing federal inmates.”
The new BOA with ICE, in addition to a revised IGSA that includes a higher federal reimbursement rate, was adopted by the board of county commissioners unanimously. They will now go to the federal U.S. Marshals Service (which executes these agreements) for final approval. The new agreements won’t take effect until that approval is secured.
A ‘big day’
Still, immigration advocates celebrated the news Tuesday as a victory — a form of harm reduction, if nothing else. Ericka Gomez-Tejeda, director of organizing for the Hope Community Center in Apopka — and a prominent figure in the local, grassroots Immigrants Are Welcome Coalition — thanked county commissioners and the mayor for “listening and being courageous and taking the actions that you have taken.”
“Today is a big day,” she acknowledged during the Tuesday meeting’s public comment period.
Coupled with a vote by county commissioners in February to publicly oppose the development of a new ICE detention facility in Orange County, Gomez-Tejeda said this week’s vote “really sends the message that our community has been sending to you and through you at this point that we don’t want ICE in our neighborhoods, in our streets, or anywhere in our communities, because they have proven that they are not to be trusted and that they’re not doing what they’re supposed to be doing.”
Many municipal and state agencies in Florida have entered into agreements with ICE to deputize officers to detain unauthorized immigrants on behalf of the federal government.
Johanna Alvarez, a U.S. citizen and daughter of an immigrant, told reporters during a December press conference — and later the board of county commissioners — that state officers (acting as federal immigrant enforcement) lured her mother out of their home, manipulating her mom to believe her daughter was in trouble.
Once she’d stepped outside, video footage obtained by advocates show the officers detained Alvarez’s mother and took her to an immigrant detention center without informing her family.
“We spent hours looking for my mother without answers,” Alvarez told reporters.
County commissioners Nicole Wilson and Kelly Martinez Semrad stood beside Alvarez as she shared her story. They’ve both shown the most (public) resistance to ICE operations in Orange County since the increase in activity that’s occurred under the Trump administration — despite threats by state officials to forcibly remove Orange County leaders from office, should they refuse to comply or show “best efforts” to assist ICE.
Martinez Semrad, representing District 5, said last month that the switch to the BOA, from the IGSA, was “the closest we can get” to addressing the community’s concerns about ICE. Wilson was similarly sympathetic and searching for the right answer.
“Which of these options gets us out of this horrible business of depriving people from their civil liberties?” she asked. “We’ve got to get there.”
Considering the cost
According to county staff, 90 percent of Florida counties have the more limited BOA, not an IGSA. So Orange County is really just joining the majority.
Under the BOA, the county will be reimbursed $50 per person by the U.S. Marshals Service for each person detained by ICE in the county jail. With state funding, that could increase to $150, while funding is still available.
Under the newly negotiated IGSA, covering other federal agencies like the FBI, the county will be reimbursed $125 per person, per day, up from the previous rate of $88. Corrections officials estimate it costs the county about $180 per day to house each federal detainee in the jail.
Still, advocates who have for months attended county meetings to urge county leaders to end abusive practices by ICE had urged them to look beyond the fiscal impact, regardless of political inconvenience.
“This isn’t just hurting undocumented people, it’s hurting entire communities,” argued Xiomary Rivera, a Puerto Rican organizer with Unite Here Local 737, during a county meeting in February. Her union represents nearly 20,000 workers in Central Florida, including thousands of service and hotel workers at Disney World.
“This is much more than political calculations — these are human lives,” said Sarah Robinson, pastor at the Audubon Park Covenant Church, at the same February meeting.
The Trump administration has detained at least 400,000 immigrants nationwide since his return to the White House in January 2025. Those subjected to federal detention have included U.S. citizens, DACA recipients, sick infants, and children who were previously separated from their parents under the first Trump administration.
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