The year had barely begun when Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida demanded legislation cracking down on illegal immigration — before President Trump was inaugurated, and before any other state could beat him to it.
The Republican governor got his wish. And now, the impact of the state’s new, aggressive enforcement powers is starting to become clear.
The Trump administration has boasted of making hundreds of immigration arrests in Florida, with the state’s help. A South Florida detention center has added a plexiglass structure with rows of cots to deal with overcrowding. Mr. DeSantis and his handpicked attorney general, James Uthmeier, threatened to remove members of a City Council who initially opposed working with federal officials on immigration enforcement, accusing them of embracing “sanctuary policies.”
In recent weeks, Mr. Uthmeier also seemed to defy a federal judge’s order on one of the new state laws. The judge, Kathleen M. Williams of the Federal District Court in Miami, temporarily blocked part of one law that makes it a state crime for unauthorized immigrants to enter Florida. Despite the judge’s order, Mr. Uthmeier told police officers that he “cannot prevent” them from making arrests under the law in question.
Such has been the tumult playing out in Florida since Mr. DeSantis signed two sweeping immigration laws in February, saying that he wanted to be on the front lines of helping the Trump administration carry out mass deportations. The measures have entangled every level of state government and unnerved residents who had long considered Florida an immigrant haven.
“I’ve never seen so many people so scared or concerned in 50 years that I’ve been working in Miami,” said Wilfredo O. Allen, an immigration lawyer.
The tension has been most palpable in South Florida, which is heavily Hispanic. The region’s politicians largely avoid anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies, given that about 54 percent of Miami-Dade County residents are foreign-born and three-quarters speak a language other than English at home. Of particular concern is the federal government’s attempt to end deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans and Haitians, many of whom live in the region.
But Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis both handily won Miami-Dade County, flipping it red and showing how even in one of the nation’s most heavily Hispanic regions, sentiment has shifted in favor of stricter immigration enforcement. South Florida’s Republican members of Congress have done little to push back against the administration’s crackdown. A new political group began publishing ads against some of them last week.
“Deporting good immigrants back to dictatorships is cruel,” one of the ads says. Pictured in it are Representatives Mario Díaz-Balart, Carlos A. Giménez and María Elvira Salazar, as well as Secretary of State Marco Rubio. All are Cuban Americans from Miami.
In a state of 23 million, it has been hard to track who exactly has been targeted by the new policies, and where. The Trump administration has offered scant details on the arrests it has conducted with Florida law enforcement, beyond saying that about 780 people around the state were detained in a major operation last week. Immigration activists worry that those arrested include people with no criminal records.
Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis have talked about deporting criminals. But “the rhetoric is a mismatch of what is actually happening on the ground,” said Paul R. Chávez, the litigation director for Americans for Immigrant Justice, a legal aid group based in Miami.
Mr. Allen, the immigration lawyer, said one of his clients was a truck driver who was detained by immigration authorities after dumping junk at a public facility without a permit.
City after city in South Florida — including Hialeah, which is heavily Cuban; Doral, which is heavily Venezuelan; and Homestead, which has a significant farmworker community — have entered into formal agreements known as 287(g) to help federal authorities with immigration enforcement. Only one city, South Miami, has gone to court to argue that such formal cooperation is not required under the new state laws.
“At this point, it feels like the governor and state attorney general are trying to intimidate people so they can tell the world that every municipality in Florida has signed on to help,” Mayor Javier E. Fernández of South Miami, a Democrat whose office is nonpartisan, said in an interview.
In February, Mr. DeSantis announced that all 67 county sheriff’s offices had adopted 287(g) agreements, making Florida the first state in the country to have such wide buy-in.
“This is a task force model, which will lead to street-level enforcement operations,” he said. “This is the maximum participation that a local entity can have.”
Chief Edward James Hudak Jr. of the Coral Gables Police Department, which signed a 287(g) agreement, said police departments were used to cooperating with their federal partners. His officers will not be checking the immigration status of crime victims, witnesses or anyone who has not been charged with a crime, he said.
“My department is going to look at it as, this is just an additional tool,” said Chief Hudak, who also serves as the legislative chair for the Florida Police Chiefs Association. “We don’t want someone to not call us or not say something if they’re in fear for their status.”
Lawyers and organizations that defend immigrants’ rights say that such arrangements have tended to lead to racial profiling.
But the politics in Florida have moved steadily toward stricter immigration enforcement, starting during the first Trump administration. Mr. DeSantis banned so-called sanctuary cities in 2019, the year he took office — and noted this year that he had done so ahead of the White House. His stance represents a sea change from when Gov. Jeb Bush, a fellow Republican who led the state two decades ago, espoused relatively liberal positions on immigration.
Even Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican who was an immigration hard-liner, later allowed certain immigrants brought into the country illegally as children to receive in-state tuition rates at public universities — a policy that the new legislation reversed.
Under other provisions of the two laws signed in February, unauthorized immigrants convicted of a capital offense are supposed to receive the death penalty. And nearly $300 million will be allocated to help local agencies assist with federal immigration enforcement, overseen by a new State Board of Immigration Enforcement.
”Florida has been, I think, one of the laboratories for experimentation, with harsh anti-immigrant measures for years now,” said Cody Wofsy, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union in San Francisco who is part of the team challenging Florida’s illegal entry law, saying it encroaches on federal duties.
In a hearing in that case on Tuesday, Judge Williams upbraided the lawyers representing Mr. Uthmeier, the attorney general, for “inviting police officers” to continue making arrests even after she issued her order.
“What I am offended by, and what I do find problematic, is someone suggesting, ‘You don’t have to follow that order, it’s not legitimate,’” she said.
Mr. Uthmeier initially wrote to local law enforcement agencies that while he disagreed with the judge’s order, sheriff’s deputies and police officers should hold off on making further arrests while the case moved through the courts. He then followed up with a letter that said he could not “prevent” such arrests from taking place.
On Tuesday, his lawyers argued that the letter laid out Mr. Uthmeier’s legal position. “We just don’t read it as inviting violations” to the judge’s order, Jeffrey Paul DeSousa, the acting solicitor general in Florida, said in court.
The judge forcefully disagreed and asked Mr. Uthmeier’s lawyers to provide some kind of redress for his second letter. His lawyers asked for more time to “have further conversations with our front office,” suggesting that the attorney general was unlikely to back down.
