ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — As Florida law enforcement officers and ICE agents focus more heavily on rooting out undocumented immigrants and arresting them, cracks are beginning to form amid what’s been a near-united effort in public.
In Pinellas County, the sheriff said 200 inmates were sleeping on the floor because he needed to make space for detainees being brought in.
Orange County leaders are eyeing the thousands of dollars their taxpayers have to shell out for people who broke zero laws in their jurisdiction.
“We want the federal government to pay for what they’re doing,” Mayor Jerry Demings said.
Orange County’s price problem
For years, immigration officials had a system to manage the arrests they were making that appeared to work for everyone.
Contracts had been signed with seven jails throughout the state where federal officials could temporarily hold inmates before being shuffled along to a federal-run facility in South Florida.
The largest jail in Central Florida, located in Orange County, has nearly 4,000 beds.
In the Tampa region, it was the Pinellas County jail.
Anyone with a federal immigration hold picked up by ICE, US Marshals, or Florida Highway Patrol could be dropped off at those facilities, where they stayed for approximately 24 hours before boarding a bus.
President Trump’s order to crack down on immigration and Florida’s demand that officers and deputies enforce immigration laws set the system ablaze. Bookings of undocumented immigrants at the Orange County jail jumped 134% year over year for the month of April, jail data showed, and the county was on track to exceed 2024’s total by mid-May.
For immigrants who were solely being held on immigration holds, the increase was 364%.
Not all of those inmates came from Orange County.
“Late last week we had approximately 40 individuals brought over from Lake County,” Public Safety Administrator Danny Banks told the state’s Immigration Council on Tuesday. “They were arrested, I believe, by FHP, all for immigration violations, and they’re coming into the Orange County Jail.”
Orange County can handle the inmates for now. Data showed that the jail was 82% full as of Thursday morning. Approximately 1 in 20 inmates was an undocumented immigrant.
However, county leaders said their contract with ICE is old. The cost to house each inmate at the jail for a day is $145. ICE only reimburses the county $88 for each inmate who doesn’t have a local charge.
Records showed the county housed an average of 17 undocumented inmates with no local charges each day during the month of April. At $57 per inmate per day, taxpayers spent $28,557 on inmates who didn’t commit a crime in Orange County.
Mayor Demings, a former sheriff, did not say where that money could’ve been spent, only that the budget was set to ensure the jail’s ability to handle its operations.
He said his staff was continuing to work to renegotiate the ICE contract.
“My job is to negotiate on behalf of our county to get a fair deal, and we are going to get a fair deal. I have no question about that,” Demings said.
Pinellas County’s capacity problem
The Pinellas County sheriff sounded more frustrated than confident when he spoke about finding a solution at Tuesday’s council meeting.
“They’re sleeping on the floor because we have to keep other housing units free for these inmates coming from all over the place before they can get them on the bus down to Fort Myers,” Bob Gualtieri said. “The money is important, of course, but it’s more about space. We are out of space where we could be using Hillsborough, Hernando, Pasco, Citrus, and all these other places, but they won’t approve it.”
He mentioned that the sheriffs approached federal and state authorities with a plan to house inmates in all 67 of the state’s jails. This appeared to mirror the Florida Sheriff’s Association’s plan in February when they announced their agencies had all reached immigration enforcement agreements with ICE.
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, who leads the council, echoed his frustration.
“I’ve got 200 beds that I could assist, for example, but I’m not going to house -- and I underscore -- I am not going to house folks under those onerous federal regulations,” he said
Gualtieri said Senator Rick Scott’s team arranged conversations between him and the federal agency to try to change how the system works.
“They said, ‘Oh, we’ll get back to you,’” he complained. “That was two weeks ago. Guess what? I haven’t heard one word again… It’s the same song and dance.”
Despite still having room, Orange County’s representatives also worried about capacity if nothing changes.
“As local law enforcement agencies continue to elevate their own opportunities to make these arrests and you bring them to Orange County, I’m fearful it’s going to lead us to maxing out our jail space,” Banks said. “We won’t have any more room at the inn.”
ICE administrators did not respond to questions emailed to their communications team.
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