Orange County is now operating under a new set of agreements for housing federal immigration detainees at the county jail.
According to the county’s new agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, someone arrested by ICE can be held at the jail for up to 48 hours — down from the agency’s own, internal standard of 72 hours.
Even as advocates are celebrating the change, they say more work still needs to be done to ensure due process rights for people detained by immigration agents in Central Florida.
The logistics: two agreements
State law requires Orange County to have some kind of agreement in place with ICE for housing immigration detainees, and to use its “best efforts” to support federal immigration enforcement.
Up until now, the required agreement with ICE was part of the county’s broader, Intergovernmental Service Agreement with the U.S. Marshals Service which allows for people detained by various federal agencies to be housed temporarily at the Orange County Jail.
But members of the county commission, including Mayor Jerry Demings, voted unanimously on April 21 to terminate the ICE section of the county’s IGSA and replace it with a Basic Ordering Agreement, or BOA. That BOA, approved by ICE early last month, allows Orange County to house immigration detainees for up to 48 hours, instead of 72.
Now, Orange County’s revised IGSA — the one without the ICE component — is also effective, following the U.S. Marshals’ approval of it earlier this week.
What does the change mean, in practice?
The new BOA has already translated to a “consistently low number of ICE detainees housed at the Orange County Jail,” Orange County Public Safety Director Danny Banks said in a prepared statement. “We are encouraged by this trend and remain hopeful that these numbers will continue to stay low moving forward.”
As of Wednesday afternoon, 16 total inmates were being held at the jail on ICE-only charges, according to the county. In other words, all 16 were detained for something immigration-related; they’re not being charged locally with any crime.
It marks a significant decline from how many inmates were previously being detained at the jail on immigration-only charges. Back in December, for example, 120 such inmates were being kept at the jail. At volumes that high, the jail was nearing capacity.
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Those numbers have since declined, following earlier negotiations between the county and ICE.
What hasn’t changed?
ICE can still bring people detained for immigration-related reasons elsewhere, besides Orange County, and bring them to the county’s jail, according to Banks.
“Our unique agreement with ICE does not dictate that that individual has to have been arrested in Orange County,” Banks said by phone Wednesday afternoon. “ICE can still bring us an inmate that they arrested in some other county on an ICE charge.”
However, with the BOA now in place, the odds of that actually happening may well decline somewhat, Banks said — even as he clarified, he can’t speak on behalf of ICE or how it operates.
“It's probably created some logistical challenges,” Banks said. “Why would you bring someone from some other county all the way to Orange, when you're gonna have to get them in 48 hours?”
ICE has authority to make arrests and, by law, the county must accept them, according to Banks.
Still, the new agreements now in place should give the county “a little more autonomy,” District 1 Commissioner Nicole Wilson said last month in an interview with Central Florida Public Media.
“There was a lot under the IGSA where ICE operated much on their own,” Wilson said. “The hope is that this gives us the ability to utilize a more streamlined booking procedure — to get the dates, the times, everything — absolutely documented, from beginning to end.”
What’s next?
Immigrant rights advocates are celebrating the new agreements as a step forward, even as they say more work still needs to be done.
“The county is actually listening to its community,” said Ericka Gomez-Tejeda with Hope CommUnity Center. “The county is hearing, ‘No ICE in our streets and our schools and our jails.’ There is no reason for us to be detaining people for an immigration issue when it's a civil violation, not a criminal violation.”
Many advocates had spent more than a year pushing county leaders to do everything it can, legally, to protect the rights of people detained on immigration charges. Gomez-Tejeda said that work will continue, with a focus on building more trust between Central Floridians and local law enforcement.
“We need local law enforcement to be building trust in the communities, not to be doing the work of the federal government,” she said.
