After months of discussion over the county’s costly agreement with federal immigration enforcement, Orange County officials moved forward Tuesday with changing the agreement the county has with the federal government that allows immigration enforcement to temporarily detain people in the county jail.
Effectively, the change would shorten how long U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents can detain people there, while still remaining in compliance with state law.
Under Florida statutes, the county must have some sort of agreement with ICE, despite protest from the community and even some of the county commissioners themselves.
Simply from a fiscal perspective, detaining people on behalf of ICE is currently costing the county an estimated $180 per person per day, while the federal government is only reimbursing the county $88 per person. Altogether, detaining people on behalf of ICE has cost the county hundreds of thousands of dollars over the last year alone.
“Why are we as taxpayers of Orange County being expected to foot the bill for a radical and extreme immigration agenda that is the responsibility of the federal government, not our local and state government?” asked Alex McCoy, a local U.S. Marine Corps veteran and activist, speaking during the public comment portion of Tuesday’s meeting.
“Every day, we’re losing money on this,” added McCoy, who led an open letter campaign signed by Florida veterans against military deployment for ICE operations. “Every day, these abuses are being put on our conscience, and I’m asking for all of us to vote against and end the IGSA.”
The county currently has what’s known as an intergovernmental service agreement, or IGSA, with the federal U.S. Marshals Service that allows ICE — as well as federal agencies such as the FBI and DEA — to detain people in the local jail for up to 72 hours. Local advocates have said, however, that ICE is rebooking people after the 72-hour period, or is otherwise leaving them in jail longer without facing any consequences.
Mayor Jerry Demings wrote a letter to ICE in early February warning them that, due in part to resource constraints, the jail would no longer allow for rebookings, and corrections chief Luis Quiñones Jr. said Tuesday that this practice has largely stopped since then.
“The question comes down to, which of these options gets us out of this horrible business of depriving people from their civil liberties?” said District 1 county commissioner Nicole Wilson, a vocal critic of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics. “We’ve got to get there.”
Orange County commissioners were presented with three options by county staff Tuesday, all of which involved maintaining some sort of statutorily required agreement with ICE.
One involved keeping the current agreement in place and accepting federal officials’ new reimbursement offer of $125 per person — a 42 percent increase from the current rate.
Another involved terminating the IGSA entirely and setting up a separate agreement for ICE, which county leaders acknowledged didn’t make a lot of sense.
They ultimately (and unanimously) agreed on a third option: to remove just the ICE component from their current IGSA, accept the new reimbursement offer for holding people on behalf of agencies like the FBI, and draw up a different sort of contract for ICE, known as a basic ordering agreement.
This agreement, also known as a BOA, would only allow ICE to hold people in the local jail on federal charges for up to 48 hours, instead of 72. Although the federal government would offer less reimbursement under this agreement — $50 per person — the county would be able to draw up to $150 per person through a state grant program, for as long as funding is available.
Importantly, the county could also release those held after 48 hours (provided they don’t have any pending criminal charges) if ICE either hasn’t transferred them elsewhere or filed a form with the court to extend their detention.
That’s a change from the current agreement, under which corrections officials have said they don’t have the independent authority to release federal inmates. District 5 county commissioner Kelly Martinez Semrad, another vocal critic of ICE, framed the shift to a BOA as the best option they currently have at their disposal.
“We stay perfectly compliant, legal, and we are rectifying some of the financial ill that has occurred to our community and appeasing all as best we can the requests that have been coming here for one year,” she said.
“We are rectifying some of the financial ill that has occurred to our community.”
County commissioner Kelly Martinez Semrad, District 5 representative
Semrad acknowledged that many in the community, including the dozens of entities organized in the grassroots Immigrants Are Welcome Here coalition, would like to see zero cooperation with ICE. More than 50 people rallied to county commission chambers Tuesday, urging county leaders to terminate their IGSA.
“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,” said Semrad.
County leaders have faced pressure from the state to ensure they are demonstrating “best efforts” to support federal immigration enforcement, as required under law. Florida’s attorney general last year threatened to remove county commissioners from office over a show of mild resistance to ICE.
They’ve noted that, if they were forcibly removed, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis could appoint commissioners that are more hostile to the immigrant community to take their place.
“I can’t let our entire Board of County Commissioners and myself be removed from office,” Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings said at the time. “I did not want to be in a position where the governor will have the opportunity to insert his minions in the roles to lead this county.”
The county has maintained an IGSA with the federal government since 1983. The agreement was amended in 2011 to add ICE. Advocates who have been pressuring county officials to terminate the county’s IGSA with ICE for more than a year celebrated the decision to move forward with establishing a BOA.
The coalition that spoke up Tuesday included representatives of Hope CommUnity Center, the Farmworker Association of Florida, Florida Rising, the Community Justice Project, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the Democratic Socialists of America, the League of Women Voters and labor union Unite Here, among others.
“Today’s your day. Stand up and fight back,” said former state senator and current county commission candidate Vic Torres ahead of the commissioners’ vote Tuesday. “Make your voices heard. Stop this abuse.”
National polling shows nearly two-thirds of people believe ICE has “gone too far” under President Trump, who vowed to conduct the “largest deportation operation in American history.”
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