Mother Jones illustration; Pedro Portal/El Nuevo Herald/Zuma
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Under a cloudless sky and the blazing Florida sun, about 25 people gathered on a recent Sunday near the entrance of the Pinellas County jail, posting cardboard signs along the grass announcing that “ICE detains people here.”
Since last year, residents of this county have come here every weekend to protest the sheriff’s office’s ongoing cooperation with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. One of them waved an upside-down flag that occasionally billowed as cars zoomed by—some honked approvingly while another driver flicked her off before speeding away. They prayed for detained immigrants and shared the latest developments of immigration enforcement in Florida. During their gathering, a white transport van pulled into the jail’s entrance.
At the start of his second term, President Donald Trump issued an executive order urging local police to cooperate with ICE under so-called 287(g) agreements, which deputize local police and jails with immigration enforcement powers. Agencies can participate under different models of the program. Police, for example, can enforce immigration law during traffic stops, execute immigration warrants at jails, or interrogate people about their legal status. No state heeded Trump’s initial call with more enthusiasm than Florida. By April 2025, more than half of 287(g) agreements in the US were based in the Sunshine State.
After Texas, Florida has the largest number of agreements nationwide, according to ICE data. Under a law passed by the state’s Republican-led legislature last year, county detention facilities, like the one in Pinellas County, are required to enroll in the 287(g) program. And the law’s language—as many residents, immigrant advocates, and attorneys have pointed out in the last year—doesn’t specify that cities and their police departments must participate in 287(g).
But Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his administration have pressured local officials to sign up. In Fort Myers, for instance, council members received a threatening letter from Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier when their 3-3 deadlock vote prevented the city from entering into an ICE agreement. “This action constitutes a serious and direct violation of Florida Law,” he wrote in the letter. He cited a state law that bans “sanctuary policies.” “Failure to correct the Council’s actions will result in the enforcement of all applicable civil and criminal penalties, including but not limited to being held in contempt, declaratory or injunctive relief, and removal from office by the Governor.” The city council ultimately approved the agreement.
Three months later, the Key West City Commission got the same message after it voted 6-1 to end its agreement. Besides the sanctuary policy ban, Uthmeier also referred to another law that directs police to “use best efforts” in supporting immigration enforcement. “We will not allow this unlawful sanctuary policy in Florida,” Uthmeier wrote on X at the time. “They have a choice: stop impeding law enforcement from enforcing immigration law or face the consequences.” Key West officials quickly reversed course.
Gov. Ron DeSantis reacts as he arrives at the ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations office in Miramar, Florida, for a press conference to announce the results of the largest immigration operation in Florida history on Thursday, May 1, 2025.Pedro Portal/El Nuevo Herald/Zuma
Meanwhile, Floridians across the state—including in Miami, Tallahassee, Fort Myers, and Tampa—have called on their elected officials and police chiefs to stand up to DeSantis. They point to a recent court case in which the South Miami mayor asked a judge to clarify if the Florida law applied to cities. During oral arguments, attorneys representing the state acknowledged that South Miami was not violating the law if it declined to participate in 287(g) — as long as the city didn’t vote against an agreement (The issue had not appeared before the South Miami city council for a vote). Dozens of other cities have also not enrolled in the program.
I watched these tensions play out in Pinellas County, where grassroots organizations and residents have spoken up at city council meetings, protested outside the jail and the sheriff’s office, written letters to their elected officials, organized bus trips to vigils held outside the notorious Alligator Alcatraz immigrant detention camp in the Everglades, and prayed for change in places of worship. Local government officials across the state have found themselves facing pressure from all directions. On the one hand, the DeSantis administration has threatened to remove them from office. But on the other hand, constituents who do not want ICE in their backyards have expressed disappointment and anger at their city’s leaders. DeSantis “has made local law enforcement toe the line of the federal government even when local officials know better for their jurisdictions,” said David A. Harris, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, who has studied the impacts of 287(g). “They’re putting officials in an impossible position.”
In Pinellas County, Sheriff Bob Gualtieri also advised police chiefs to sign up, the local outlet Creative Loafing reported. “The new law puts legal obligations on all of us to ensure we do certain things, and the consequences for not doing so include removal from office by the Governor,” he wrote in an email to the chiefs. Gualtieri declined an interview request for this story.
“They’re putting officials in an impossible position.”
The immigration crackdown in Florida has not been as visible as that in other states such as Minnesota, where ICE raids in public places have fueled massive protests and generated news coverage. “That’s very different from what we’re seeing in Florida,” said Amy Godshall, an immigrants’ rights staff attorney with the ACLU of Florida. “It’s not one big event one day that captures everyone’s attention. It’s smaller-scale immigration enforcement that’s happening across the state every day.” According to state data, 287(g) enforcement has led to more than 13,000 arrests in Florida since August.
Last summer, several high-profile immigrant arrests—some of which stemmed from traffic stops—led many residents to realize their police departments had a deep connection with immigration enforcement.
“This is a lot bigger than just ICE,” Leo Gonzalez, co-founder of the advocacy group Tampa Bay Immigrant Solidarity Network, which has collected more than 900 petitions against 287(g), told me last month. “We started looking into these 287(g) agreements, and we realized that they were the biggest funnel that the state has for getting people into immigrant detention.”
A sign outside the entrance of the Pinellas County jail on Sunday, June 7. Laura Morel
One of the attendees of the Pinellas County jail vigil was Courtney Prokopas, a Gulfport resident. She’s the head of the St. Petersburg League of Women Voters Immigration Justice Advocacy Team, which has organized many local efforts to raise awareness about 287(g). About six years ago, she left Chicago to care for her grandmother in Gulfport during the pandemic, and has lived in the tight-knit, charming waterfront city in Pinellas County ever since. When her grandmother died, Courtney and her partner weighed leaving Florida. But when the city was pummeled by multiple hurricanes in 2024, leaving much of the city’s homes with damage and its picturesque waterfront by Boca Ciega Bay underwater, Prokopas was inspired by the way the city’s residents united to rebuild and decided to stay.
Last year, after Florida enacted several immigration laws in support of Trump’s deportation machine, she learned that Gulfport was participating in the 287(g) program. “I was livid,” she told me last month at a coffee shop on Gulfport’s Beach Boulevard. She had an “End 287(g)” badge pinned onto her New Yorker bag. “What mechanisms were in place to make this happen?”
It wasn’t until January—in the midst of the ICE siege of Minneapolis that left Renée Good and Alex Pretti dead—that other residents began to question the agreement. At a city council meeting, more than 20 people spoke up during public comment, which typically only attracts a few residents, prompting the Gulfport city council to schedule a workshop about its 287(g) agreement.
Courtney Prokopas, a Gulfport resident, has been organizing local efforts against 287(g) agreements for more than a year.Laura Morel
The following month, Gulfport police chief Mary Farrand gave a presentation to the city council and a crowded room of residents. She signed the 287(g) agreement in February 2025 after consulting with the city manager. In a PowerPoint, she highlighted Key West’s decision to keep its agreement. Farrand pointed out that Florida Statute 908.104 says any law enforcement agency “shall use best efforts to support the enforcement of federal immigration law.” Anyone in violation of this chapter, the statute reads, “may be subject to action by the governor, including potential suspension from office.” It is the same section of law that Uthmeier referenced in his letters to Key West officials.
Gulfport’s police force had conducted no ICE-related arrests since the agreement was signed last year, Farrand said, adding that she’d rather comply with ICE through a 287(g) agreement than experience what Minneapolis residents endured earlier this year. “I don’t want someone coming here and doing it for us,” Farrand said. She did not respond to my requests for an interview.
“If I had to take ICE coming into my town versus my police who know us, who care about us, out there every day doing their best to protect us, no question for me I would always choose our local police, working very hard to keep us safe.”
Several residents spoke up during public comment. “I want to be on the right side of history,” one of them told the council. “Please remember that you were voted in to represent us,” another said.
In her remarks, Gulfport mayor Karen Love pushed back. “When this was signed last February, we did not have the knowledge that we have today,” Love said. “We did not see the traumatizing behavior by ICE in other cities…If I had to take ICE coming into my town versus my police who know us, who care about us, out there every day doing their best to protect us, there’s no question for me I would always choose our local police… they are working very hard to keep us safe.”
“I was not elected to come in here and fight state and national issues,” Love added. She did not respond to my requests for comment. I spoke to Marlene Shaw, the city’s vice mayor, last week, and asked her what it was like to contend with state and federal decisions—in this case, immigration policy—trickling down to the local level. “I feel very strongly in local voices and local choices,” she told me. “It’s very difficult when decisions are made by people that don’t know us and don’t understand us and don’t know what our community wants.”
For Prokopas, keeping Gulfport’s agreement was disappointing. “I don’t have skin in the game, I’m not a council member, I’m not a mayor,” she told me. “But in these small towns where the terms are short, the pay is nothing, if you stuck your neck out for the citizens and made a case, and then DeSantis moved in and removed you from office, the whole town would have your back and vote you right back in. You’d be a folk hero.”
In neighboring St. Petersburg, another waterfront city in Pinellas County, tensions over ICE cooperation were also escalating. Just as in Gulfport, locals lined up to speak at a city council meeting in February against the ICE agreement. Among the speakers was Rev. Andy Oliver from the Allendale United Methodist Church, known for its advocacy work supporting immigrants, the unhoused, and the LGBTQIA community. When I spoke to Oliver last month, he shared many of the same sentiments as Prokopas that elected officials should take action despite the threat to their positions. He sees it as a “moral stand.” “Being removed from office is not the worst thing that can happen, in my opinion,” he said. “These human rights violations are far worse than being removed from office.”
Protesters gather outside the entrance of St. Petersburg’s city hall on May 16.Laura Morel
Allendale has also attracted attention for the outspoken messages posted outside the church, which this past year have included “Abolish ICE” and “ICE does harm.” During a recent service in May, Oliver and others spoke of Alligator Alcatraz, cheering on its likely closure and decrying the state’s use of emergency funds allotted for hurricane relief toward the facility’s operations. In his sermon, Oliver described the members of the LGBTQIA community who fought against New York police officers raiding the famous Stonewall Inn nearly 60 years ago. “A brick was what our queer ancestors had in their hands,” he said. “A phone is what we have in our hands now.”
Oliver told them they could call Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez and Senate President Ben Albritton. Screens next to the lectern displayed their phone numbers, and a prompt congregants could leave in a voicemail. “Go ahead. Dial the number. Here’s what you can say,” Oliver told them. The message partially read, “Emergency funds should be used for real emergencies: hurricanes, flooding, public health…Please create clear, enforceable guardrails, so Florida never again turns disaster money into cages for humans.” Around me, as a soft hymn played in the background, people pulled out phones from pockets and purses.
“This evil is not only far away in the Everglades. It is here in our own city, in the choices of our mayor and our police chief, in the ways our city has partnered with ICE.”
Earlier in the service, a church member, Lynne Hensley, spoke from the lectern, “This evil is not only far away in the Everglades. It is here in our own city, in the choices of our mayor and our police chief, in the ways our city has partnered with ICE.”
Mayor Ken Welch’s office didn’t respond to my requests for an interview, and police chief Anthony Holloway declined to speak to me. Police spokesperson Yolanda Fernandez told me Holloway signed the 287(g) agreement “as required” by Florida Statute 908.104, which reads, “state and local law enforcement agencies and any official responsible for directing or supervising such agency shall use best efforts to support the enforcement of federal immigration law.” According to state data, the agency has had 26 “encounters” with people under 287(g) since August. After any arrest, if police find that someone has an immigration warrant, officers will notify ICE and wait an hour for them to arrive, Fernandez said.
The city council did not vote on the agreement. Richie Floyd, vice chair of the St. Petersburg City Council, said he wishes that the city had never signed it, pointing to the fact that many municipalities in Florida have been able to avoid 287(g). He has attended several meetings organized by the Tampa Bay Immigrant Solidarity Network. “We shouldn’t have anything to do with them,” he said of ICE. “It’s been frustrating to be in my position because I’ve always maintained that any legal path to ending the agreement, I would go down… I’m frustrated that we ever signed the agreement, because there are cities that haven’t signed it, and were not forced to. No one’s been successful in getting out of it yet.”
The 287(g) issue is one of several attempts by the DeSantis administration to thwart the authority of more progressive cities such as St. Petersburg. Floyd noted, “So many things pushed out by the state and the federal government lately have just flown in the face of a lot of people’s values in this city.” A new state law taking effect in January that bans cities from funding or promoting DEI measures could affect St. Petersburg’s support of Pride Month. The city hosts one of the largest Pride parades in the South. Last year, the Florida Department of Transportation forced St. Petersburg and other cities to remove its rainbow and Black History Matters street murals. “I don’t want St. Pete to change at all,” Floyd said. “I think everyone should still be welcome here.”
So far, no Florida cities with a current 287(g) agreement have reversed course. Gonzalez, with the Tampa Bay Immigrant Solidarity Network, acknowledges that it feels as if efforts to end cooperation with ICE have reached a stalemate. He anticipates that the next step will be to ensure candidates running for local offices in Tampa Bay this November consider taking a stand on the 287(g) issue.
As the status quo remains, so do the growing impacts of these policies. In February, the ACLU released a report, “Deputized for Disaster,” that analyzed the impact of 287(g) nationwide. In Florida, researchers found “numerous cases of harassment and profiling of US citizens and noncitizens alike, a climate of extreme fear in communities, and reports of serious civil rights violations,” the report reads.
“There’s a lot of fear, of course. That is the main thing,” Gonzalez said. He knows of many immigrants, worried of being arrested and detained, who have decided to go back to their home countries. Others have limited their movements, only going out to go to work, buy groceries, and attend church. Many Latino business owners he’s spoken to report fewer customers since last year. “The impact hasn’t really been measured in our state,” he said. “I don’t think there’s an interest for the state to reveal that information.”
