DeSantis pressure – From Pinellas County jail vigils to threatened votes in Fort Myers and Key West, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s administration has leaned hard on local governments to join 287(g) agreements—binding county officials to immigration enforcement roles they say leave
On a cloudless Sunday near the entrance of the Pinellas County jail. about 25 people stood on the grass holding cardboard signs that read “ICE detains people here.” Cars roared past. Some drivers honked in approval; another flicked her off. The vigil wasn’t just protest. It was a prayerful, weekly insistence that local officials stop cooperating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
A white transport van rolled into the jail’s entrance as the signs went up.
Since last year, residents of Pinellas County have gathered every weekend to protest the sheriff’s office’s ongoing cooperation with ICE. During those rallies, people posted updates on immigration enforcement across Florida, and they prayed for detained immigrants.
That pressure—from residents. from advocacy groups. and from their own fear of what cooperation could mean—now runs up against an equally direct force from Tallahassee. 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: police can enforce immigration law during traffic stops. execute immigration warrants at jails. or interrogate people about their legal status.
Florida has embraced the program more aggressively than any other state. By April 2025, more than half of 287(g) agreements in the U.S. were based in Florida, and after Texas, Florida had the largest number of agreements nationwide, according to ICE data.
A major shift came with a law passed by Florida’s Republican-led legislature last year. Under that law, county detention facilities like Pinellas County are required to enroll in the 287(g) program. But the language. as many residents. immigrant advocates. and attorneys have pointed out. doesn’t specify that cities and their police departments must participate.
Still, Gov. Ron DeSantis and his administration have pressed local officials to sign up.
In Fort Myers. council members faced a threatening letter from Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier after their 3-3 deadlock vote prevented the city from entering into an ICE agreement. Uthmeier wrote that the action “constitutes a serious and direct violation of Florida Law.” He cited a state law that bans “sanctuary policies. ” and warned that “Failure to correct the Council’s actions will result in the enforcement of all applicable civil and criminal penalties. ” including possible contempt. declaratory or injunctive relief. and removal from office by the governor.
The Fort Myers city council ultimately approved the agreement.
Three months later, Uthmeier sent the same message to Key West after it voted 6-1 to end its agreement. Beyond the sanctuary policy ban, Uthmeier cited another law that directs police to “use best efforts” in supporting immigration enforcement. “We will not allow this unlawful sanctuary policy in Florida,” he 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 reversed course.
While letters and votes played out in cities across the state—Fort Myers, Key West, Miami, Tallahassee, and Tampa—residents kept insisting the fight wasn’t abstract. It was about who gets detained, who gets questioned, and what local government should do under the threat of state punishment.
Tensions have also spilled into court. The dispute has surfaced after South Miami’s mayor asked a judge to clarify whether the Florida law applied to cities. During oral arguments. attorneys for the state acknowledged 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. That issue, the article says, had not appeared before the South Miami city council for a vote. Dozens of other cities have also not enrolled in the program.
In Pinellas County, the conflict has been played out in public meetings and in the daily rhythms of organizing. Grassroots groups and residents have spoken at city council meetings. protested outside the jail and the sheriff’s office. written letters to 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 officials have faced pressure from all directions. DeSantis’s administration threatens removal from office. Constituents who don’t want ICE in their backyards have responded with disappointment and anger at the people they elected.
“They’re putting officials in an impossible position,” said David A. Harris, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law who has studied the impacts of 287(g).
In Pinellas County, Sheriff Bob Gualtieri also advised police chiefs to sign up, according to Creative Loafing. Gualtieri wrote to chiefs that “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.” Gualtieri declined an interview request.
Florida’s crackdown has not looked like the raids that drove mass protests in other states. “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.” State data cited in the piece says 287(g) enforcement has led to more than 13. 000 arrests in Florida since August.
For many residents, the beginning of that realization came last summer, when several high-profile immigrant arrests—some tied to traffic stops—made it clear that police departments had deep connections to immigration enforcement.
“This is a lot bigger than just ICE,” said Leo Gonzalez, co-founder of the Tampa Bay Immigrant Solidarity Network. His group has collected more than 900 petitions against 287(g). “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.”.
At the Pinellas County jail vigil, Gulfport resident Courtney Prokopas has been at the center of local organizing. She is head of the St. Petersburg League of Women Voters Immigration Justice Advocacy Team, which has organized efforts to raise awareness about 287(g). Prokopas moved to Gulfport about six years ago to care for her grandmother during the pandemic and stayed after her grandmother died.
Her decision to remain was tested by hurricanes in 2024 that damaged homes across the city and left the waterfront by Boca Ciega Bay underwater. She said the rebuilding effort inspired her to keep going.
Then came the political shock: after Florida enacted several immigration laws in support of Trump’s deportation machine. she learned Gulfport was participating in 287(g). “I was livid,” she said at a coffee shop on Gulfport’s Beach Boulevard last month. She pinned an “End 287(g)” badge onto her New Yorker bag and asked what mechanisms allowed the agreement to happen.
In January—during the ICE siege of Minneapolis that left Renée Good and Alex Pretti dead—other residents began questioning the agreement more openly. At a city council meeting. more than 20 people spoke during public comment. which typically only attracts a few residents. prompting the Gulfport city council to schedule a workshop about its 287(g) agreement.
The following month, Gulfport police chief Mary Farrand presented to the city council and a crowded room of residents. Farrand signed the 287(g) agreement in February 2025 after consulting with the city manager. In a PowerPoint presentation, she highlighted Key West’s decision to keep its agreement.
Farrand pointed to Florida Statute 908.104. which 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.” Uthmeier’s letters to Key West officials cited the same section.
Farrand told the council that Gulfport’s police force had conducted no ICE-related arrests since the agreement was signed last year. She said she would 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.
“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. ” she added. Farrand did not respond to requests for an interview.
Several residents spoke up during public comment. “I want to be on the right side of history,” one person told the council. “Please remember that you were voted in to represent us,” another said.
In response, 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 requests for comment.
Marlene Shaw. the city’s vice mayor. described what it means to live with these choices coming down from higher levels. “I feel very strongly in local voices and local choices,” she told the reporter. “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, the decision has been personal and frustrating. “I don’t have skin in the game. I’m not a council member. I’m not a mayor. ” she said. But she argued that in small towns—where officials face short terms and low pay—people will back the ones who push back. “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,” she said.
In St. Petersburg, another waterfront city in Pinellas County, tensions have been rising along similar lines. In February, locals lined up to speak at a city council meeting against the ICE agreement. Rev. Andy Oliver from Allendale United Methodist Church appeared among the speakers. The church is known for advocacy work supporting immigrants, the unhoused, and the LGBTQIA community.
When Oliver spoke last month. he said the stance was rooted in a belief that officials should take action despite the risk to their positions. He described 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.”.
Allendale has also attracted attention for the messages posted outside the church. including “Abolish ICE” and “ICE does harm.” During a service in May. Oliver and others spoke of Alligator Alcatraz. cheering its likely closure and decrying the state’s use of emergency funds allotted for hurricane relief toward the facility’s operations.
In Oliver’s sermon, he referenced members of the LGBTQIA community who fought against New York police officers raiding the 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 congregants 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 the service, a soft hymn played as people pulled phones from pockets and purses.
Oliver also framed the issue as local as well as distant. “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,” he told the congregation.
Earlier in the service, Lynne Hensley, a church member, 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,” she said.
Mayor Ken Welch’s office did not respond to interview requests, and police chief Anthony Holloway declined to speak. Police spokesperson Yolanda Fernandez said Holloway signed the 287(g) agreement “as required” by Florida Statute 908.104.
Fernandez also provided operational details tied to the agreement. 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, which has become part of what frustrates some officials and residents. Richie Floyd, vice chair of the St. Petersburg City Council, said he wishes the city had never signed it. He pointed to the fact that many municipalities in Florida have been able to avoid 287(g). Floyd attended meetings organized by the Tampa Bay Immigrant Solidarity Network.
“We shouldn’t have anything to do with them,” Floyd 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.”.
Floyd tied his disappointment to the broader feeling of being pushed around. “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. ” he said. A new state law taking effect in January bans cities from funding or promoting DEI measures, which could affect St. Petersburg’s support of Pride Month.
St. Petersburg 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.”
As of the reporting, no Florida cities with a current 287(g) agreement have reversed course. Gonzalez, from the Tampa Bay Immigrant Solidarity Network, said the efforts to end cooperation with ICE have reached a stalemate. He expects the next step will shift toward elections: ensuring candidates running for local offices in the Tampa Bay area this November take a stand on the 287(g) issue.
The consequences, meanwhile, are pressing forward even without a single headline-grabbing moment. In February, the ACLU released a report titled “Deputized for Disaster,” analyzing 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.
Gonzalez said he knows immigrants who are worried about being arrested and detained and have decided to return to their home countries. Others have limited their movements, leaving only for work, groceries, and church.
He also said many Latino business owners report fewer customers since last year. “The impact hasn’t really been measured in our state,” Gonzalez said. “I don’t think there’s an interest for the state to reveal that information.”
The weekly vigil outside the Pinellas County jail continues under that unanswered question: whether local officials ever truly had a choice, or whether the pressure to comply is simply the price of keeping their jobs.
Ron DeSantis Florida politics 287(g) ICE immigration enforcement sanctuary policies Pinellas County Fort Myers Key West South Miami St. Petersburg Tampa Bay Immigrant Solidarity Network ACLU of Florida court case