How Florida Is Pushing for Increased Local Cooperation With ICE

Florida is avidly backing the Trump administration’s deportation efforts. Alongside other state moves to crack down on unauthorized immigration, Gov. Ron DeSantis is pushing local law enforcement to assist federal agents in making arrests.

“[We’ve] enacted groundbreaking legislation to fulfill the historic mission of delivering on President Donald Trump’s mandate to end the illegal immigration crisis once and for all,” DeSantis said during his March 2025 State of the State address. “It is now a crime to enter Florida illegally, the days of catch-and-release are over, and all state and local law enforcement have a duty to assist in interior immigration enforcement efforts.”

State agencies ranging from the Florida Highway Patrol to the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission are currently assisting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Between April 2025 and January 2026, state law enforcement agencies arrested more than 10,400 unauthorized immigrants as part of Operation Tidal Wave, a joint enforcement operation between state and federal authorities.

A state bill signed into law in February 2025 required county detention facilities to sign partnership agreements with ICE, known as 287(g) agreements, by April 2025. If officials didn’t comply, the governor could temporarily remove them from office and sue to force compliance. All 67 counties now have a 287(g) agreement in place.

Some localities in the state support the Trump administration’s immigration agenda and have eagerly participated in enforcement actions. Jacksonville’s sheriff’s office, for example, has partnered with ICE for years, and the city went further last year when it passed an ordinance that criminalizes being an undocumented immigrant, punishable by up to 60 days in jail.

But not everyone thinks enforcement efforts are working out. Floridians themselves are divided. A February-March 2026 poll found likely midterm voters were split nearly 50-50 over whether they approved or disapproved of Trump’s handling of immigration. Voters had a dimmer view of ICE, with 55 percent disapproving of how the federal agency is handling its job and 42 percent approving.

Law enforcement officials are also split. At a March meeting of the Immigration Enforcement Council — an eight-member group of local law enforcement appointed by Republican state leaders to advise on cooperating with ICE — at least six members said that unauthorized immigrants who haven’t committed crimes should not be deported. Instead, council members said, such immigrants should be fined and required to learn English and send their kids to school. Then, Congress should give them a path to citizenship.

“There are those here that are working hard. They have kids in college or in school. They’re going to church on Sunday. They’re not violating the law, and they’re living the American dream,” Grady Judd, sheriff of Polk County and chair of the council, reportedly said.

DeSantis dismissed the concerns, and recalled a 2025 special session focused on cracking down harder on unauthorized immigration.

“I called the special session of the Legislature to make sure that our state and locals were assisting with these important federal efforts. Because I know even Republican sheriffs — even people in police who are Republicans — not everyone agreed with participation,” the governor said during a press conference. “And I respect that, but I also know my job as governor is to do what’s best for the people, not what any one person who gets elected in one county thinks.”

Florida’s immigration policy also sparked turmoil in some municipalities. It was initially unclear whether the new statute required city law enforcement, not just county sheriffs, to adopt 287(g) agreements. It also wasn’t clear whether declining to enter into an agreement made a municipality a “sanctuary city,” which is illegal in Florida. Last year, Key West voted to end its existing agreement with ICE and Fort Myers declined to enter into one. When the attorney general then threatened to oust local legislative members from office, both cities retreated and signed agreements.

The controversy has highlighted tensions between state and local governments over one of the most politically consequential issues of the day.

Record-Breaking Collaborations

Florida, alongside Georgia and Texas, is one of only a handful of states tomandate local participation in 287(g) agreements. Typically, signing such agreements is voluntary, and, across the U.S., state and local agencies are entering into them at a record-breaking pace.

Each 287(g) agreement specifies which immigration enforcement actions local officials are authorized to carry out. The partnership models range in scope. In some counties, sheriffs sign an agreement authorizing them to question arrestees in the county jail to find unauthorized immigrants and detain them at ICE’s request. In others, local police are empowered to question and arrest people based on their immigration status.

During the week of Feb. 24, 2025, ICE signed 140 new 287(g) agreements — more than had “ever existed at one time up to that point,” The Journalist’s Resource reports. In the 11 months from April 2025 to March 2026, the total number of active 287(g) agreements rose from 506 to 1,537.

“Partnerships with law enforcement are critical to having the resources we need to arrest criminal illegal aliens across the country” an ICE spokesperson told Governing in an email. The spokesperson declined to specify the kinds of resources law enforcement provides for the federal government.

A Question of Safety

South Miami Mayor Javier Fernandez worries that having police expand into immigration enforcement could make community members less willing to engage with officers to help solve crimes.

“My biggest concern about any participation formally was it’d change the lens through which our community views our local law enforcement, and whether it would erode that trust that really is the foundation of successful community law enforcement,” Fernandez says. Trust between police and residents takes a long time to build, and just one bad interaction can shatter that, he says.

“When you [as police] are now engaged in what is probably a very necessary in some cases, but very difficult, act of removing people from their families here, it erodes trust,” Fernandez says. “I’m not trying to disparage the role of ICE agents or their work. … But it’s a very different mission than one where you're working side by side with the community to build long-term trust to ensure personal security.”

South Miami sued last year to find out if local governments actually had to have 287(g) agreements. While a judge dismissed the case, Fernandez says he got his answer: state lawyers said during oral arguments that cities aren’t required to sign 287(g) agreements, but also cannot cancel such agreements if they have them.

Some in law enforcement share Fernandez’s concern.

Ten months into Trump’s first term, the National Immigrant Women’s Advocacy Project surveyed 232 law enforcement officers across 24 states. By fall 2017, anti-immigration rhetoric was rising, and the administration had already ended Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, tried to withhold funding from sanctuary cities and temporarily barred immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

Forty-two percentof law enforcement respondents said federal immigration policies had affected the relationship between police and foreign-born communities and communities with limited English proficiency. About a quarter of survey respondents’ agencies didn’t cooperate with federal immigration efforts; others had 287(g) agreements, cooperated to a different extent or simply didn’t know.

Among law enforcement officials who believed there was an impact on police-community relationships, some said immigrants now feared police would turn them over to ICE. Some officials also said immigrant crime victims wouldn’t cooperate with law enforcement because they feared deportation or being turned in to immigration officials by the perpetrator in retaliation.

Some law enforcement agencies said immigrant community members were less willing to report crimes or help with criminal investigations compared to the prior year, while others said immigrants actually engaged more — possibly due to some agencies upping community outreach to try to offset fears, the survey found.

Fernandez says collaborating with ICE wouldn’t make his community safer.

“Certainly, if we've got violent criminals or criminals of any stripes that are in our community, we're arresting them, whether they're here legally or not,” he says.

DeSantis, however, said during the press conference that deportation efforts shouldn’t just focus on unauthorized immigrants who’ve committed violent crimes, because people without criminal records also have the capacity to commit such a crime in the future.

“This idea that unless you’re an axe murderer you should be able to stay, that is not consistent with our laws and it’s also not good policy,” DeSantis said. “We have different people who are victimized by illegal immigrants every day in this country. Not all of them had criminal records at the time, in fact probably most of them don’t. … You come illegally and then you stay until you commit a really violent crime? That just doesn’t work, that’s incoherent.”

The Bottom Line

Fernandez was also alarmed by the potential impact of Florida’s statute on the city’s finances. He said the rush to sign a 287(g) agreement by Florida’s April 2025 deadline would’ve forced the city to take on a lot of risk.

“My first concern always goes to liabilities — not creating more financial exposure for our residents by expanding our operating mission with no offset revenue,” Fernandez says.

The mayor wouldn’t be able to stop police engaging in an immigration enforcement action he deemed unreasonable once such an agreement was signed, he says. At the same time, the city would be on the hook for any third-party lawsuits arising over police’s immigration enforcement work or officer claims over injuries incurred while doing work that might not be covered by existing workers’ comp insurance. These could be costly expenses that would require the city to delay investing in other areas. In 2020, Los Angeles County paid a $14 million settlement to plaintiffs charging the county violated their rights by denying them bail and holding them beyond their release dates due solely to ICE detainer requests.

“I’m not trying to message on whether immigration enforcement is right or wrong. I have my own personal opinion as the son of Cuban American exiles that came here, frankly, without any sort of permit status or legal status and overstayed a tourist visa,” Fernandez says. “That’s not really pertinent to my decision-making at a local level. My job is to protect the interests of my local constituents [and] our treasury, and discharge all of my fiduciary and intended obligations as best I can.”