The law enforcement council that advises Florida on immigration turned its attention Monday to the way Immigration and Customs Enforcement is doing its job under the current federal approach.
The State Immigration Enforcement Council agreed to draft a letter to President Donald Trump and congressional leaders urging a focus on lawbreakers instead of hardworking immigrants in the country illegally.
This concern -- from sheriffs and police chiefs leading Florida’s local efforts to assist ICE -- resembles widespread criticism from immigrant advocates and others that the Trump administration is not simply deporting immigrants involved with crimes but ordinary workers and family members.
From the chair
Council Chair Grady Judd, the outspoken Republican sheriff of Polk County, brought up the issue. He criticized ICE as being inconsistent, detaining law-abiding immigrants but, in some cases, releasing others with criminal or mental health issues.
Judd told the council he recently heard from concerned Republicans who, he said, are “active economically, politically.”
At Monday's meeting, Judd told the story of a Colombian woman in her 20s who came here as a child and married a U.S. citizen. He said she was "scooped up out of a waiting room at ICE for deportation."
The sheriff said he has had no conflict in the community, "because we're not going into strawberry fields or citrus groves or construction sites. It's not necessary to do that.” His office is finding plenty of people to arrest from “hit-and-run crashes” when undocumented drivers who don’t have a license flee the scene.
Judd said his deputies focus on those who violate the law and those who have federal detainers -- which he said have increased with the addition nationwide of 1.5 million immigration warrants.
“Everyone that we've taken into custody,” Judd said, “has been involved in a criminal complaint … or hanging out with them, and were collateral because, you know, we stopped the car for DUI and he had two drunk buddies who were illegal as well -- or a police encounter.”
But, he said, “there are those here that are working hard. They have their kids in college or in school. They're going to church on Sunday. They're not violating the law, and ... they are living the American dream and are being very productive and doing good in this country."
Those people should have a path forward through a civil process, Judd argued. “If they waved a magic wand tomorrow and said, ‘We're going to deal with that’ we still have a lifetime of work of getting the illegal immigrants out of this country that are here illegally committing crime.”
'They need to fix it'
Others on the council echoed Judd's views, including Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, Charlotte County Sheriff Bill Prummell and the police chiefs of Kissimmee and St. Cloud.
“We're not out doing immigration enforcement, just raiding businesses and homes,” Prummell said, “but unfortunately, when ICE gets involved, you have the collaterals, and that's what's happening. And I wholeheartedly agree that Congress, they need to get off their butts, and they need to fix it.”
Gualtieri said he’s "100%, full throttle in favor" of immigration enforcement.
"But what's right's right and what's not is not," Gualtieri said. "And going after this mom who's got three kids who just tried to make a living, who's been here for 15 years -- the whole scenario you described -- that isn't right, and they do need to fix it."
