Orlando city officials, including Mayor Buddy Dyer, argue that despite widespread concern about federal officials eyeing Orlando as a site for a new immigrant detention center, legally, their hands are tied and there’s nothing they can do to block it.
City attorney Mayanne Downs told Dyer and city commissioners over email that, “however well-motivated” ideas to block a new detention center might be — such as changing zoning laws — a clause within the U.S. Constitution would likely prevent the city government from overriding the federal government.
“As an agency of our federal government, [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] is immune from any local regulation that interferes in any way with its federal mandate,” Downs wrote to city leaders, according to text of the email forwarded to Orlando Weekly. “This is so because the Federal Supremacy Clause establishes that federal laws are ‘the supreme Law of the Land,’ and override — and preempt — any conflicting state or local constitutions, charters, laws or regulations.”
Dyer affirmed in his own statement, following receipt of the email, that the city “is unable to take action to limit or regulate any activity by the federal government.”
“We remain committed to being a city that treats every person with dignity and respect,” Dyer stated, adding that immigrants “are a valued part of our community and have helped to shape a stronger, more vibrant Orlando.” He further urged people concerned about ICE activity to contact their representatives in Congress, “as Congress holds the power to oversee, fund and reform these activities.”
Dyer, Orlando’s mayor of over 20 years, is not running for re-election next year after first being elected to the office in 2003.
The apparent lack of fight from the outgoing mayor and the city’s legal team is a blow to immigrant rights advocates who have been fighting to protect due process rights for immigrants detained by ICE and against the development of a local federal detention facility.
As it is, the Orange County Jail is currently serving as a temporary holding center for people detained by federal agents on immigration-related holds. But there are no federally operated detention centers in Central Florida. At least not yet.
‘A failure of imagination’
Questions about the development of a new federal detention center in Orlando first emerged earlier this month on Jan. 16 after local TV news reporters caught federal officials touring a 439,945-square-foot industrial warehouse in southeast Orlando, located at 8660 Transport Drive.
City commissioners and Dyer say they haven’t been informed by federal officials of any formal or fixed plans to build a new detention facility there, but the visit has raised alarm bells in the community, nonetheless.
Orange County commissioner Nicole Wilson, for instance, preemptively took charge and sent a memo to the Orange County board of commissioners shortly after the tour, urging the county to issue a temporary moratorium (or ban) on the development of non-municipal detention centers.
“Tourism, hospitality and visitor-serving commercial uses depend heavily on land use compatibility, public perception and the overall quality of place,” Wilson wrote in her memo. “The placement of detention facilities in or near tourism corridors or mixed-use commercial areas risks undermining these critical economic sectors,” she argued.
About a quarter of Orlando’s total population is foreign-born, according to the most recent U.S. Census data, including much of the labor force driving the region’s world-renowned tourism and hospitality industries. Florida is also home to thousands of Temporary Protected Status holders from other countries, such as Venezuela and Haiti, who are waiting in a cruel limbo for the Trump administration to determine whether they can legally continue to live and work in the United States.
Since last April, federal agents have detained more than 5,000 people on immigration holds in the Orange County Jail alone, costing local taxpayers more than $300,000 in expenses not reimbursed by the federal government.
“I am afraid for anyone caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, who tries to follow directions but does so in the wrong way, in a moment of panic or confusion, because they too are afraid,” one local resident told Orange County commissioners earlier this month, during the public comment period of a board meeting. “I love Orange County, and I don’t want this county caught up in a preventable human rights injustice, only because we are too afraid to put it to an end.”
City council members in Kansas City, Missouri, this month passed their own resolution to block the construction of an ICE facility within their own city limits, inspiring Wilson’s own resolution here in Orange County. The city’s mayor, who introduced the resolution, has also continued defending their decision to do so, even in the face of a potential legal challenge from the federal government.
“We’ve made it clear that we don’t want a 10,000- or 5,000-person mass detention ‘human being warehouse’,” Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas told local news station KSHB 41, acknowledging that the issue could be taken up in court.
An all-Republican city council in Roxbury, New Jersey, preemptively approved a similar resolution this month, stating, “it is the position of the Township Council of the Township of Roxbury that the Township of Roxbury is not an appropriate municipality for the placement of a detainee processing facility.”
Berbeth Foster, an attorney with the Community Justice Project in South Florida, told Orlando Weekly in a phone call Tuesday that there are “certainly issues with federal preemption” that could raise concern for the city of Orlando’s legal team.
But, she added, it wouldn’t be surprising if city officials were simply trying to take the “safe route” by admitting defeat, to avoid potential litigation.
“We don’t believe this is as black and white as the city attorney has, or the mayor has expressed — that there’s absolutely nothing that can be done. The law usually just doesn’t work that way,” she said.
Foster, typically based in Fort Lauderdale, has been working with local immigrant rights advocates here in Central Florida, who have largely focused their efforts on pressuring the county government to ensure due process protections for people detained by ICE in the local jail. They’ve also called on the county to terminate its agreement with the federal agency.
Foster said she and her colleagues with the Community Justice Project are researching whether the city of Orlando would have any legal pathway to block a potential detention facility in city limits, and have reached out to national constitutional legal scholars for their input as well.
“There might be a failure of imagination here to think about the things that can be done,” she said. “But we’re certainly willing to do our own legal assessment and work and reach out to local elected officials, hopefully with additional ideas in the future, if there’s anything that we determine is a viable legal option.”
Concerns about a new detention center have only ticked up in the community following recent reports of expanded ICE activity in Central Florida, in addition to the two recent killings of U.S. citizens by federal immigration enforcement agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Renee Nicole Good — a 37-year-old poet and mom of three — was fatally shot by an ICE officer on Jan. 7 while volunteering as a legal observer of ICE activities in Minneapolis. Thirty-seven-year-old Alex Pretti, a nurse within the Department of Veterans Affairs healthcare system, was also shot an estimated 10 times by Border Patrol agents this past weekend on the streets of Minneapolis, after trying to help a woman who had been shoved to the ground by federal agents.
You can read the full text of city attorney Down’s email to Dyer and city commissioners (as forwarded to Orlando Weekly) below:
Dear Mayor & Commissioners:
In response to reports that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) may be planning to operate a detention center here in Central Florida, within our city limits, Mayor Dyer asked us to research and report about what options the City has to regulate or prevent that plan.
I know all of you have heard from your constituents about forced deportations by ICE, the tragedies of broken families, the fears of those who have lived and worked in our community for many years, and worries about fundamental public safety. You’ve also heard concerns that ICE agents don’t appear to have the training, experience and leadership in law enforcement protocols, de-escalation tactics, and the overall safe policing practices we expect. Some of you have received suggestions of actions we can supposedly take, including declaring or seeking moratoriums, or using our zoning ordinances to outlaw or otherwise stop the use of property within our borders as ICE detention centers, whether directly by ICE or its agents.
However well motivated these suggestions are, the law is very clear: ICE, as an agency of our federal government, ICE is immune from any local regulation that interferes in any way with its federal mandate. This is so because the Federal Supremacy Clause establishes that federal laws are “the supreme Law of the Land,” and override – and preempt – any conflicting state or local constitutions, charters, laws or regulations. US Constitution, Art VI, Cl 2. This law is well-settled and was applied in Florida in a case in which the City of Hollywood tried to require the United States Postal Service to comply with local building and zoning regulations in building a new post office. See US Postal Service v. City of Hollywood, 974 F. Supp. 1459, 1465 (SD Fla 1997). In addition to federal law, there are other, state laws that, as you know, limit what actions we can take at the local level about ICE, deportations, and related matters.
In sum, we can take no action to limit or regulate any activity by the federal government in its action to enforce federal immigration law, and that is clear and not debatable under the law of the United States and Florida. We are duty bound to follow the law, even when we don’t approve of it. Each and all of us have sworn to uphold and defend the law of this land, you by your oath when you took office, and those of us who are lawyers, by the oath we took when admitted to the bar to practice in the State of Florida.
I am always available to answer any questions, or to assist in any way.
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