Crime & Police

Highway Patrol Leads Florida in Immigration Arrests, Data Shows

"They should be called 'Florida Show Me Your Papers Patrol,'" immigration activist Thomas Kennedy says.
Ron DeSantis stands at a press conference surrounded by Florida Highway Patrol
Florida Highway Patrol has immigration enforcement powers under a 287(g) partnership with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Photo via X/@GovRonDeSantis

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The Florida State Board of Immigration Enforcement released new figures for arrests and encounters with suspected illegal immigrants, offering a snapshot of which state law enforcement agencies are encountering and detaining migrants across the state.

Since August 1, dozens of Florida law enforcement agencies have encountered more than 5,200 suspected illegal immigrants, according to Florida’s Suspected Unauthorized Alien Encounters dashboard. Of those encounters with law enforcement, 1,373 people were arrested on local and state charges, and 2,852 people were arrested on federal immigration charges by state agencies.

The dashboard indicates that 2,273 people have been arrested under the 287(g) program, which grants local and state police federal immigration powers. That raises the question of how state agencies are making immigration-related arrests if 287(g) authority wasn’t used — or whether they’re simply calling U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to take over.

The majority of these encounters and arrests, the dashboard reveals, have occurred on state highways. Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) officers account for the highest number of encounters with suspected undocumented immigrants, reporting 2,844 cases. Nearly 90 percent of arrests made by FHP were related to federal immigration violations. (The dashboard is missing some of the participating 287(g) state agencies listed on the ICE website.)

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Interestingly, though FHP leads the way for immigration arrests, its officers do not wear body cameras.

Earlier this year, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced a partnership between the Florida Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles and ICE under 287(g), authorizing FHP troopers to question people about their immigration status during traffic stops and detain suspected illegal immigrants. Dozens of municipalities and sheriff’s offices across Florida have signed 287(g) agreements to support President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

“What you’re really seeing is just the weaponization and almost singular focus of at least state-level agencies for immigration enforcement,” Thomas Kennedy, immigration activist and policy analyst for the Florida Immigrant Coalition, tells New Times. “Like the Florida Highway Patrol, for example, they really just become ‘Show Me Your Papers Patrol.’ They’re just operating on highways and in communities, just basically looking for ways to pull people over to ask them for their immigration status.”

More than 1,500 of those arrested were from Mexico, while 1,300 were Guatemalan natives. On Tuesday, October 14, the dashboard showed that 21 U.S. citizens were also arrested and charged, and nine other U.S. citizens had encounters with law enforcement but were not arrested. But after New Times asked why U.S. citizens were being arrested, those figures vanished from the dashboard.

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New Times emailed the Florida State Board of Immigration Enforcement, DeSantis’ office, and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) for an explanation. While we did not receive a response, the dashboard figures for U.S. citizen encounters and arrests changed significantly by the time of this reporting. The dashboard now shows there have been only two reported encounters with U.S. citizens, and only one citizen was arrested on local or state charges. State agencies report that they encountered 104 people whose country of citizenship is unknown.

“It is incredibly disturbing that this data includes people listed as U.S. citizens,” Alana Greer, an attorney and cofounder of the Community Justice Project, tells New Times. “We know that programs like 287(g) and other forms of mass immigration enforcement routinely ensnares U.S. citizens and others with lawful status, and it’s an indicator of how faulty the broader set of data that these agencies are relying on to do enforcement and the inevitable results have been time and time again, racial profiling, and violations of constitutional rights, and that should concern everyone, regardless of their immigration status, as the system continues to expand.”

Immigration advocates have warned that the 287(g) model has resulted in more instances of racial profiling. In July, Immigration attorney Magdalena Cuprys said a FHP officer told her that anyone “who appears Hispanic” must be sent to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) after her client, a Honduran man with a pending asylum case, was stopped by FHP at a truck weigh station. He was detained and later held at the CBP facility in Dania Beach. In April, Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez, a 20-year-old U.S. citizen, was arrested near Tallahassee for allegedly being in the country illegally and detained for more than 24 hours after FHP pulled over the car he was riding in for speeding. Similarly, an 18-year-old U.S. citizen was arrested and held at a CBP station for six hours, despite telling FHP officers during a traffic stop that he “was born and raised right here.”

While the Trump administration has vowed to deport only the “worst of the worst,” only 25 of the 4225 arrests in Florida have gang affiliations, according to the dashboard. Officers have also reported 90 encounters with minors. Twenty minors have been arrested on federal immigration charges.

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Miami-Dade County: 94 Encounters

  • Not Arrested: 19
    • Miami Springs Police Department: 11
    • Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office: 2
    • Sunny Isles Beach Police Department: 2
    • Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles: 1
    • Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission: 1
    • Orange County Sheriff’s Office: 1
  • Arrested on Federal Immigration Charges: 56
    • Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles: 33
    • Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission: 12
    • Sunny Isles Beach Police Department: 1
    • Florida Department of Law Enforcement: 1
    • Miami Springs Police Department: 1
  • Arrested on Local/State Charges: 19
    • Miami Springs Police Department: 13
    • Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles: 5
    • Hialeah Police Department: 1

Broward County: 126 Encounters

  • Not Arrested: 45
    • Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission: 36
    • Florida Lauderdale Police Department: 6
    • Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles: 3
  • Arrested on Federal Immigration Charges: 70
    • Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles: 59
    • Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission: 8
    • Florida Department of Law Enforcement: 3
  • Arrested on Local/State Charges: 11
    • Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles: 5
    • Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission: 4
    • Fort Lauderdale Police Department: 1
    • Wilton Manors Police Department: 1

Palm Beach County: 492 Encounters

  • Not Arrested: 50
    • Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles: 40
    • Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission: 8
    • Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office: 2
  • Arrested on Federal Immigration Charges: 415
    • Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles: 364
    • Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office: 51
  • Arrested on Local/State Charges: 27
    • Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles: 12
    • Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office: 12
    • Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission: 2
    • Coconut Creek Police Department: 1

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