Tension rises as activist coalition urges Orange County to guarantee due process for detained immigrants

A couple of Orange County commissioners became visibly upset during their regular Board of County Commissioners meeting Tuesday in response to a coalition of labor, immigrant, and human rights groups that showed up to demand due process rights for undocumented immigrants detained in the local jail.

The Immigrants Are Welcome Here coalition, made up of over 30 local organizations, mobilized at least two dozen people to ask the Orange County Commission to rework the language in a contract the county has with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that allows ICE to detain people in the county jail who are accused of being in the country illegally.

Currently, rights advocates told Orlando Weekly that the jail isn’t tracking the legal status of those detained when they’re brought in by ICE officers, or those acting under ICE authority — and that matters, since due process protections vary based on the legal status of noncitizens. Jail officials, they said, also aren’t permitted to share information about those detained with the public, including loved ones, under the county’s current agreement.

Orange County Corrections did not respond to a request for comment from Orlando Weekly Tuesday to confirm this. But Corrections Chief Louis Quinones Jr. shared, during a similarly contentious board meeting back in April, “ICE is bringing those individuals to us and we’re holding them. … We don’t know what they’ve done that would afford ICE that opportunity to bring them to us. We’re just housing them overnight, is what we’re doing, until they go to another facility.”

Ericka Gomez-Tejeda, organizing director for the Hope CommUnity Center, said this lack of transparency has made it difficult for families (and immigration attorneys) to figure out where their loved ones are, or where they may be heading next.

“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,” Gomez-Tejeda told Orlando Weekly Tuesday.

Activists pleaded with commissioners to ensure due process for those detained — a constitutional requirement of the government to follow laws and fair procedures. Under the U.S. Constitution, due process rights are guaranteed to everyone in the U.S., including noncitizens.

“Children are afraid,” said Sister Anna Kendrick, co-founder of the Hope CommUnity Center, who’s advocated for immigrants and farmworkers for half a century. “They don’t go to school. People don’t go to church anymore and they pay somebody to go shopping for them. It’s unconscionable,” she said.

People “get lost” when they’re taken into custody, she added, “and we can’t find them.”

“They can’t call home. They can’t know who they’re talking to. It’s unconscionable. We have to stop that,” Kendrick argued. “Please do something.”

As of 2023, nearly one-quarter of Orange County’s population was foreign-born, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. The county, a blue spot in an otherwise largely red state, is home to sizable populations of Mexican, Venezuelan, Haitian and Colombian immigrants.

Florida, broadly, is also the most common residence for Temporary Protective Status (TPS) holders, according to the Brookings Institution. TPS holders are nationals who are legally permitted to temporarily live and work in the U.S. if they come from certain countries, like Venezuela or Haiti, that are experiencing political turmoil or other unsafe conditions.

“Orange County is home to thousands of Venezuelan Haitians, Cubans, Nicaraguans where legal status can now be revoked,” Gomez-Tejera told the county board. “These residents who have now legally lived here and worked here after fleeing from state violence and political oppression in their own home countries, they have just become the most vulnerable immigrants for erroneous detentions and deportations because ICE has their home address, car tax and workplace locations,” she said.

Dozens of municipal and university law enforcement agencies in Florida, including the University of Central Florida and Orlando Police Department, have entered into agreements with ICE that effectively deputize law enforcement officers to act as immigration agents. There are more than 600 such agreements now in place across the country, according to Axios, with 43 percent of them in Florida.

President Donald Trump, who’s on a mission to conduct the “largest deportation operation in American history,” has waffled when questioned on the due process rights of noncitizens detained by ICE. When asked by NBC News’ Meet the Press last month about whether he needs to uphold the Constitution of the United States as U.S. president, Trump responded, “I don’t know,” adding, “I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.”

Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings, a former police chief and county sheriff, argued that Orange County Jail officials are treating those detained by ICE in their facility “humanely.”

“As someone who spent a career in law enforcement, I have the greatest admiration for the people who do enforce the laws of our nation, our state and our local government,” he said. “While those individuals are within our custody, we provide them with information about the due process. We cannot represent them in that process — that is not a function of our role as county government.”

Demings told activists they should bring their concerns to federal officials, not local officials who are under orders to comply with federal mandates.

“We’re doing what we can to work within the system that we did not create here at the local level,” he said. 

County commissioner Nicole Wilson, however, appeared dissatisfied with the mayor’s response, sharing concern about how their actions as local officials would hold up.

“I believe, in my heart of hearts, that being told as a local government that we had to detain people that have not committed crimes, that have not been given their full due process rights because the federal government told us we have to, is not legal,” she said. Wilson was one of just two county commissioners who voted against entering into a 287(g) agreement with ICE in March.

Corrections Chief Quinones has himself admitted that some of the individuals detained in the jail by ICE are held only on the charge that they are in the country illegally — but no other accusation of committing a crime. From Jan. 1 to May 10, more than 400 inmates booked into the jail were held only on an ICE detainer, WKMG reported.

“We hear you,” Commissioner Mike Scott told activists Tuesday. “We are fighting a battle on so many fronts.”

Local elected officials, he pointed out, have been threatened with removal from office for daring to not comply with immigration enforcement mandates. “I’m not afraid of a fight, but we have to be strategic,” he said.

Kelly Semrad, however — the only other commissioner to join Wilson in voting against the 287(g) agreement — took a different tone, her eyes brimming with tears. Semrad’s own grandfather came to the U.S. from Mexico undocumented.

“We voted [the agreement] through because we felt compelled to comply to state law, but you know what? I’m not afraid to be removed if I’m going to stand with all of these people and hold up the American flag and wave it and demand due process,” she declared, her voice breaking.

“We voted through because we felt compelled to comply to state law, but you know what? I’m not afraid to be removed”

Semrad received silent, raised fists of solidarity from members of the audience in response.

Advocates with the immigrant rights coalition have already urged Orange County commissioners to reconsider one of their contracts with ICE, and to draft a trigger resolution to cancel the contract if the courts rule it’s no longer mandated.

According to Gomez-Tejeda, one of the contracts that Orange County has with ICE — the 287(g) agreement, authorizing local law enforcement to enforce aspects of immigration law — is mandatory. But another, the intergovernmental services agreement (IGSA), allowing ICE to detain people in the local jail temporarily, is not.

The call to ensure due process for immigrants detained in the Orange County Jail has reached a broad swath of the community, from coalition members like the League of Women Voters to labor unions that represent many immigrant workers.

“This is my passion because I’m an immigrant, I went through the process, so I know everybody’s afraid right now,” said UNITE HERE Local 737 member Isaie Marc, a U.S. citizen who immigrated to the U.S. from Haiti 26 years ago.

“The public should be aware that those are humans, right?” Marc said, referring to individuals who are being detained. “They deserve the right to a due process.”

Demings said at the board meeting that the Commission could revisit their agreement with ICE at a later date.

Subscribe to Orlando Weekly newsletters.

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

This article appears in Jun 4-10, 2025.