Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests of people without criminal charges or convictions in Florida rose by more than 450% this June compared to last year.
Since the start of the second Trump administration, ICE has carried out more than 10,818 arrests in Florida, up from 3,496 in the same period last year. But in June, the largest share of arrests, 36%, were of people the federal government labeled as having no criminal history in the country, a 457% increase from June 2024.
The latest arrest data from ICE through June 26 was published by the Deportation Data Project and obtained as a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The project is led by attorneys and professors in California, Maryland and New York. The anonymized individual arrests dataset provides insight into who the Trump administration is targeting in its goal to ramp up deportations and as Gov. Ron DeSantis insists on making the state a leader in internal immigration enforcement.
“We still got a lot, a lot, a lot that we got to do, but obviously we’ve led the way on this, and we’ll continue setting the pace,” DeSantis said during a Tuesday meeting of the State Board of Immigration Enforcement, which the Florida Legislature created earlier this year and comprises the Florida Cabinet.
The governor emphasized the role of local law enforcement in gaining authorization from the federal government to arrest people they suspect live in the state without legal authorization under a program known as 287(g). Florida law enforcement agencies have the most 287(g) agreements with ICE in the country, 237, extending to police within higher education institutions.
Overcrowding in immigrant detention centers
While the Trump administration’s 3,000 daily arrest quota led to a 31% increase in Florida of arrests of people with criminal convictions between May and June, the biggest jump, 86%, was of people without convictions or charges. However, arrests of people with pending charges decreased by nearly 3%.
Florida’s increase is even higher than the national jump in arrests of people without a U.S. criminal history. According to the data from ICE, such arrests increased by 84% nationwide between May and June. Meanwhile, arrests of immigrants with criminal convictions decreased by 1%.
Living in the country without permanent legal status is not a crime, unless the person has been deported before. However, entering by avoiding immigration authorities is a crime that can be punishable with a fine of up to $250 and six months’ imprisonment for the first offense, per federal statute.
ICE daily detainee estimates have also shown a jump in the people held at the federal facilities in Florida this year. As of June 20, the number of people in immigration detention at three Florida facilities was 111% higher than the levels before the inauguration, according to an analysis by Human Rights Watch. Overall, the estimated daily detainee population as of July 17 was 1,932, which is nearly 500 more than before Trump took office.
Although the data provide daily estimates of detention, Florida has been less transparent in its operations of the notorious immigrant removal center it built in eight days in the Everglades.
The most detailed information came from the Miami Herald’s publication on July 13 of a list of 750 detainees housed in the old airstrip, including more than 250 people without criminal convictions or pending charges in the U.S.
Immigrants made to eat ‘like dogs’
Detainees at three federal facilities in Florida and the state-run immigrant center in the Everglades have said they were given rotting food, denied medical care and access to their attorneys, according to a federal lawsuit and the Human Rights Watch report. Five of the 11 deaths of immigrants under ICE custody this year have happened in Florida, according to press releases from the federal agency.
Human Rights Watch’s report, published Monday, states that immigrants at three federal detention centers in Florida are held “under conditions that flagrantly violate international human rights standards and the United States government’s own immigration detention standards.”
Immigrants held at the Federal Detention Center in Miami have said they had to kneel to eat while their hands were restrained behind their backs.
“We were chained though, so we could not reach the plates with our hands,” said Harpinder Chauhan, a British man deported in June, whose account was published in the report. “We had to put the plates on chairs and then bend down and eat with our mouths, like dogs.”
Need for beds
To Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, who chairs a statewide immigration advisory council, the added arrests highlight the need for more detention beds. He’s pushing for the federal government to waive housing standards to allow more county jails to detain immigrants.
“The federal housing standards are ridiculous at best and insane at worst,” Judd said during the Tuesday meeting of the state immigration board.
Judd said the federal government didn’t seem amenable to granting the request to allow immigration detainment under Florida jail standards.
“If it’s good enough for those that are innocent until proven guilty, and they’re United States citizens, certainly those housing rules should be sufficient for those that are in this country illegally,” he said.
In his most recent comments about the state’s immigration enforcement efforts, the governor has talked about the need for the federal government to bolster its detention capacity.
Instead of moving quickly with the construction of a second state-run detention center, DeSantis wants to hold off, depending on demand from the feds and the capacity levels at the Everglades site state officials named “Alligator Alcatraz,” because of the dangerous reptiles would deter escape attempts.
DeSantis has emphasized the influx of $45 billion Congress gave ICE to build new detention centers as part of Trump’s massive tax and spending cut bill.
“We’ve gone above and beyond in Florida to assist this mission, because we think it’s really important for our state and for our country,” DeSantis said. “But they absolutely are going to need to take all that massive amount of money they just got and be able to provide a better ability to hold, process, and deport illegals.”
The seeming slowdown in opening the second state detention center at the Florida National Guard Joint Training Center in Clay County comes as the DeSantis administration faces mounting legal challenges to the Everglades facility located in Collier County. There is also growing scrutiny from Democratic lawmakers about the $245 million the DeSantis administration has spent to build and operate the detention center in just a month, according to AP.
–Jackie Llanos, Florida Phoenix
Deka says
Please see the record straight. President Trump has said over and over ALL illegals need to be removed. He did say they would focus on criminal illegals but stated over and over ALL ILLEGALS need to go. With that in mind, why write this story? Trump is doing exactly what he told America he would do if re-elected
and America voted him in!