Under a new state immigration law, all operators of county jails are required to enter into what are known as 287(g) agreements with ICE, the federal immigration enforcement agency. City governments that don’t operate any sort of jail or detention facility are not, and the city of Orlando got flak for doing so anyway. (At the same time, Florida AG James Uthmeier threatened to remove Dyer from office after Dyer said that the Orlando Police Department would not be “proactive” in immigration enforcement.)
A coalition of immigrant rights, labor and social advocacy groups in Central Florida have organized efforts to ensure due process for immigrants in the community who are detained by ICE and held in the Orange County jail system.
Advocates called on Orange County leaders Tuesday to, at the very least, ensure detainees have access to “know your rights” information and legal resources in their language. They also asked the county to draft a resolution that would trigger the cancellation of the county jail’s agreement with ICE if they are no longer required to under state law or the law is determined unconstitutional.
[content-1]“We do recognize that your hands are tied to a certain extent,” said Sophia Glover, with Florida Rising, advocating as part of the Immigrants Are Welcome Here coalition, made up of 30 local advocacy groups. “We’re not asking you to do anything that’s not within your power to do,” she affirmed.
A motion from county commissioner Kelly Semrad that afternoon to have staff look into drafting up a trigger resolution ended up abandoned, after a contentious back-and-forth on the dais over what exactly Semrad was asking of them. “I’m uncomfortable with having to vote on something brought up from the floor unless I have time to research it,” said commissioner Christine Moore, visibly panicked. “I think it’s premature to be adopting resolutions,” Demings agreed. “We want people to be treated with dignity and respect. We want them to be treated in a lawful manner. These are circumstances that have occurred that certainly [were] out of our control, and we’re not in a position at this point to say that we’re not going to follow the law.”…