The executive director of the new State Board of Immigration Enforcement is pushing for the Florida Division of Emergency Management to house and transport immigrants awaiting deportation.
Larry Keefe, who’s been on the job for a month, said he’s pitched the idea to the Trump administration. Other states could involve their emergency management agencies in immigration enforcement, too, if the federal government approves, Keefe said during the first meeting of the State Immigration Enforcement Council, composed of four sheriffs and four police chiefs.
“We have the world-class, absolute best in Kevin Guthrie, the director of the Division of Emergency Management, and he is really good about safely moving people and stuff around in high-stress, high-pressure emergency situations, including soft-sided facilities, hard-sided facilities — whatever the state of the art is and in the planet Earth on how to house people and move people and feed people, and treat people safely and well, he knows it,” Keefe said during the meeting at the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office.
Keefe, who organized Gov. Ron DeSantis’ migrant flight from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard in 2022, pressed for military judicial officials within the Florida National Guard to secure authorization to act as immigration judges under the U.S. Department of Justice. DeSantis and Keefe met with border czar Tom Homan on March 20, Keefe said.
Orlando Democratic Rep. Anna Eskamani criticized the idea.
“FDEM should be focused on responding to hurricanes and natural disasters — not engaging in immigration enforcement,” Eskamani said. “I will also add that the main beneficiary of this concept will be the for-profit private prison industry, who will receive our tax dollars to hold individuals without due process.”
Council faces reality of logistics in deportations
Questions about where Florida will house immigrants rounded up by local and state law enforcement took center stage during the four-hour meeting.
Florida law enforcement entities are signing up officers with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to question and detain people they suspect are in the country without authorization, which requires a 40-hour online training, as part of the federal 287(g) program. As of Monday, Florida agreements with ICE make up 45% of the existing 287(g) agreements in the country, according to ICE’s database.
So far, only highway patrol troopers are completing the training, but Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said he doesn’t know how enforcement will work considering the inadequate number of beds in immigration detention centers.
“We absolutely have to give guidance to the cops on the street,” Gualtieri said. “We have to give them some framework within which to work. You can’t just give them these credentials and say, ‘Here, go do something.’ This is not gonna work.”
Gualtieri, Senate President Ben Albritton’s council pick, said ICE has rejected a proposal to have sheriffs transport immigrants to ICE offices after holding them for 48 hours in county jails.
“We were going to get them out of these county jails within that 48-hour period, coordinate with ICE, get them to an ICE sub-office,” the sheriff said. “ICE could then do the processing, and they could get them into the ICE system, but ICE wouldn’t approve the plan, so it’s dead. So, I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Meanwhile, Gov. Ron DeSantis and Attorney General James Uthmeier, his former chief of staff, are pressuring cities to enter into agreements with ICE, threatening city councilmembers in Fort Myers with removal from office after they took a 3-3 vote blocking the agreement. The council reversed its decision days later.
The council also wants the federal government to lower its standards to allow use of state and county detention facilities, the council’s chair, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, said. He offered the suggestion after hundreds protested overcrowding and a lack of beds, food, and access to medicine at ICE’s Krome Detention Center in Miami, according to the Miami Herald.
–Jackie Llanos, Florida Phoenix
