Immigrant detainees with no pending criminal charges are flooding the Orange County Jail, to the point that the jail is nearing capacity.
On Tuesday, 120 inmates with no charges were at the jail under a federal immigration hold, Deputy County Administrator of Public Safety Danny Banks said. Immigration holds are civil — not criminal — charges.
“In the last six months, we've seen (that number) sharply decline and then come back up again. But the point is, yes, 120 is a lot. What might be our max. We don't clearly define that for some security reasons, but we're getting much closer.
“And when we hit a max, we have the ability, lawfully, to say we have no more room at the inn. You gotta go somewhere else,” Banks said.
This November, the average daily population of immigrant detainees with no pending criminal charges rose 871% from last November, according to data from the county’s corrections department.
Banks shared the insight about jail capacity during Tuesday’s Orange County Commission meeting, where District 5 Commissioner Kelly Martinez Semrad and District 1 Commissioner Nicole Wilson urged their colleagues to do more to ensure county residents detained by immigration agents are being treated fairly and humanely.
Tuesday’s meeting followed a press conference organized by immigrant advocates, where both commissioners also decried President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown happening across the state and country.
At the press conference, resident Johanna Álvarez spoke about her mother’s recent experience of being detained by immigration agents last month. On Sunday, her mother was deported to Mexico, Álvarez said.
On Nov. 19, Álvarez said, two men who identified themselves as state police lured her mother from their home. The men said they wanted to speak with her about her white car.
“As soon as she passed the gates of our house, they arrested her and took her to the immigration detention center,” Álvarez said. “And at 8:26 a.m., a man called me and identified himself as a financial detective. He told me he was just letting me know that immigration had come to our house for my mom.
“When I asked him where they had taken her, because she takes medication daily and that day she hadn't taken her medication, he said he didn't know where they had taken her, which was a lie, because he was the one who took my mom to the detention center,” Álvarez said. “We spent hours looking for my mother without answers.”
Álvarez said her mother had lived in the United States for more than 26 years and had been fully cooperating with immigration authorities.
Advocates called on commissioners and Mayor Jerry Demings to seek legal clarity on what exactly Orange County’s obligations are in terms of working with immigration authorities.
“We came in front of this commission back in March and warned that this would happen: that they were not going after criminals, that they were violating due processes, that they were going to revoke rights from people going through legal processes of immigration,” said Hope CommUnity Center Organizing Director Ericka Gomez-Tejeda.
“The question that we have is: where is our County Commission on this? Where is the lawsuit?”
Earlier this year, under immense pressure from state leaders, the county approved an addendum to an existing agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE. The addendum allows for county correction officers to transport detainees to ICE-approved facilities.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier had threatened to remove Demings and commissioners from office if they didn’t approve the addendum.
After commissioners voted in early August to ratify the addendum, Demings said he was still “willing to fight.”
“I can tell you this: is that we're in a better position today, having signed the addendum, to win the fight in the future … Until the courts have the opportunity to weigh in, the fight isn't over,” Demings said at the time.
But on Tuesday, Demings said he doesn’t see a reason to file a lawsuit, or otherwise seek legal clarity on Uthmeier’s direction for the county to agree to transport immigrant detainees.
“I don't know what clarification or clarity you're trying to seek,” Demings said. “We don't agree with (Uthmeier’s) interpretation or any of that, but I don't see a legal predicate, or something that we're trying to clarify at this point that is necessary.”
County Attorney Jeffrey Newton agreed.
I think it would be somewhat premature,” he said. “I think there may come a point in time where this county may have to file some litigation, but that time is not today.”
Advocates, plus Wilson and Martinez Semrad flagged concerns about costs the county will ultimately bear for transporting immigrant detainees, plus housing them at the jail.
So far, Orange County hasn’t actually transported any federal inmates, Demings said Tuesday. “In terms of recovering money spent on that, there is none, because we have not been asked to do that.”
Right now, for housing an immigrant detainee with no other pending charges, Orange County can bill the federal government $88 per day. But the county is working on renegotiating that reimbursement rate, an “ongoing” process that was recently interrupted by the federal government shutdown, Banks said.
Now that the shutdown is over, negotiations have resumed.
“It is my intent that every dollar that we have spent to house the federal inmates, we will seek to get those dollars back. That process is playing itself out. It is not concluded at this point,” Demings said.
Wilson pleaded for more transparency about immigration arrests happening in Orange County.
“We need to know which agents are pulling people from these homes,” Wilson said. “For all we know, they're being smuggled into human trafficking. We don't know who they are. They don't show their badges, they don't show a judicial warrant, and we don't get any of that information.
“If we are the end point, as a jail — as a correctional facility — for criminals, then there should be some assurance to the public that they're criminals. If they are not and this is a civil matter, we deserve more answers,” Wilson said.
But with federal authorities involved, the amount of information legally owed to Orange County is limited, Banks said.
“On these ICE arrests — they're all representing ICE, under the 287(g) program. So whether it's an FWC officer, whether it's a deputy sheriff, whether it's an FHP trooper, they're all, at that time, representing ICE,” Banks explained Tuesday.
Banks said he wishes the county could provide more helpful information to immigrant detainees upon arrest.
“When those state law enforcement agencies make, in their determination, a lawful arrest and bring them to our jail, we have to book them, so to speak. Our only course is to seek reimbursement for our costs in doing so,” Banks said.
