A joint operation between Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Florida state authorities resulted in the detention of 152 immigrants during a three-day raid that concluded this week.
The law enforcement action, confirmed Tuesday by the agencies involved, was carried out under the 287(g) cooperation agreements and primarily targeted the capture of Mexican and Central American citizens with criminal records or irregular immigration status, as part of a “zero tolerance” strategy implemented by the state government.
The operation involved Border Patrol agents and the Florida Highway Patrol (FHP), who acted with delegated immigration authority.
According to the official statement released on social media, the main objective was “to remove criminals from neighborhoods,” although authorities withheld the list of specific cities where the raids took place.
“We apprehended 152 criminal aliens in a three-day operation. We deported 23 on the second day alone, in collaboration with our partners,” the ICE report detailed.
To illustrate the profiles of those detained, the agency released profiles of four individuals: a Mexican citizen convicted of fraud, a Guatemalan suspected of child cruelty, and two Hondurans, one with an eight-year sentence for armed assault and the other accused of domestic violence.
These types of raids are authorized under Section 287(g), a section of immigration law that allows the Department of Homeland Security to train local and state police officers to act as federal agents, a tool that Florida has aggressively expanded under the current administration.
The news of the arrests comes amid a heated fiscal controversy. A report from Governor Ron DeSantis’s administration, leaked to the press and sent to the state legislature, revealed that the Florida government spent $573 million on immigration operations over the past three years.
The critical point of this finding lies in the source of the money: the funds come from a budget line item designated for emergencies, usually reserved for responding to hurricanes and natural disasters.
Critics of the state administration point out that using these resources for border patrols and internal raids distorts the purpose of this reserve fund, especially in a state vulnerable to climate disasters.
Governor DeSantis, who has made a hardline stance against immigration his political platform, defended the actions and forced all local authorities to sign agreements with ICE.
“No other state has done more than Florida,” he declared last week, highlighting that interagency cooperation led to the arrest of 20,000 migrants in the last nine months.
This figure comes amid a hostile legislative environment for the undocumented community in the state, previously marked by SB 1718, which invalidates out-of-state driver’s licenses and requires hospitals to inquire about immigration status.
Now, the administration is looking to go further with new legislative proposals, most notably the intention to prohibit undocumented immigrants from sending remittances to their countries of origin through strict identification requirements at currency exchange offices and banks.
