By Ryan Gillespie, Kairi Lowery
Orlando Sentinel
ORLANDO, Fla. — Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier is threatening to have Orange County commissioners and Mayor Jerry Demings removed from office if they don’t back down from their refusal to let corrections officers transport immigrants to federal detention facilities.
In a letter, Uthmeier accused the Orange County leaders of enacting “sanctuary” policies by rejecting the transport proposal from ICE at their July 15 meeting, when they also sought to stop holding immigration detainees without criminal charges in the county’s jail.
“By rejecting this addendum presented by ICE and Florida Sheriffs, you adopted a sanctuary policy and failed to exercise best efforts in support of the enforcement of federal immigration law,” Uthmeier wrote, using a term for local policies that protect undocumented immigrants, which are prohibited by Florida law.
Orange County Commissioner Nicole Wilson , who urged her colleagues to fight against efforts to force the county to work with ICE, said the county should “push back” despite the attorney general’s threat.
Uthmeier’s announcement comes days after newly-appointed state Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia informed the county he was planning to audit the county’s spending.
The letter is the attorney general’s latest attempt to rein in local governments that try to limit their participation in immigration enforcement.
Specifically, he wrote in the letter dated Tuesday that the county “must immediately adopt the June Addendum and allow Orange County Corrections Officers to transport illegal aliens to ICE-approved detention facilities. Failure to take corrective action will result in the enforcement of all applicable civil and criminal penalties, including removal from office by the Governor.”
Spokespersons for Demings didn’t immediately comment on the letter.
Wilson said the jail is already facing steep shortages of corrections officers, with a report earlier this year finding the jail had about a 25% vacancy rate among employees.
“This is commandeering our local corrections officials to run state and federal errands, at the same time they’re scrutinizing our budget that we used to pay for those officers,” she said.
Felipe Sousa-Lazaballet, who had urged commissioners to reject the ICE transport proposal at the July 15 meeting alongside more than 30 speakers, said Tuesday that complying now would be falling into the governor and attorney general’s “bullying pulpit.”
By law, counties are required to have a 287(g) program, where local police and correctional staff can serve as ICE agents. Anything more isn’t required, he said.
What corrections needs to know about the 287(g) program and ICE partnerships
“It’s a lie. The attorney general is lying,” Sousa-Lazaballet said.
Uthmeier cited Florida law that states counties must use their “best efforts” to assist ICE in any way possible. And by rejecting the transport proposal, he said Orange County is in clear violation.
But the “best effort” section of the law is nothing more than a way for the state to dictate county actions relating to ICE, said Alana Greer , an attorney with the Community Justice Project .
“[It’s a] generalized thing that our state is trying to weaponize to encompass all sorts of actions that are not required by law,” she said. “ICE could turn around and say, ‘Give me 50% of your officers’ … Under this interpretation, there would be no discretion or no ability to say what’s best for the community.”
The July 15 vote came as commissioners and Mayor Jerry Demings faced immense pressure from advocates to reject the addendum and end its Intergovernmental Service Agreement, or IGSA, with the feds, which allows authorities to house federal inmates at the Orange County Jail .
It’s just one of a handful of facilities in the state with such an agreement, meaning detainees are housed there who may have been arrested hours away.
At the meeting, Demings contended that having corrections officers — who are county employees — transport detainees to facilities like Alligator Alcatraz, about 240 miles south of the jail, is a bridge too far.
“That’s not our responsibility. That is the federal government’s responsibility, not ours,” Demings said. “I will not agree for our corrections staff to transport federal inmates to other facilities.”
Among the complaints of commissioners were that the addendum would require the county to pay for transportation, at a time when the county is already arguing ICE is shortchanging it for housing inmates. It costs roughly $145 per day to detain someone, and the county is reimbursed $88.
“It’s now a question of the state wanting them to go further than what state law requires,” Greer said. “Are they going to do that at the expense of resources and costs of Orange County taxpayers and residents?”
The plan to use local officers to transport the detainees was originally hatched by the Florida Sheriff’s Association, which was hosting a three-day meeting in ChampionsGate in Osceola County this week. Uthmeier was seen there on Tuesday, just hours before the letter was shared to his X account.
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