By Paul Waldmiller
Did you know that as of late May 2026, Florida officials announced over 25,000 arrests of undocumented immigrants, but more than 1 million remain?
Recent reports highlight the scale of enforcement and ongoing operational challenges that indirectly address this question including the fact that the Florida Highway Patrol accounting for more than 10,400 of these encounters and the state continues to conduct large-scale initiatives like Operation Tidal wave which resulted in the same, 10,400 arrests since its launch, and maintains a network of 287(g) agreements with local agencies.
The Pew Research Center however, reported the unauthorized population in Florida surged to a total of 1.6 million in 2023, representing the third-largest such population in the U.S. after California and Texas. The number minus the 10,400 arrests of Illegal Immigrants leaves Florida with an astounding, over 1 million remaining here in our state.
To the credit of Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida legislature, the state operates two major detention facilities and is planning a new facility in Northwest Florida dubbed “Panhandle Pokey” to handle ongoing transfers to federal custody. But that doesn’t result in new arrests of the more than 1 million Illegal Aliens that plague Floridians including zero of the tens of thousands of single-sided or even more so, Violence Against Women Act marriage fraudsters that have needing to be yet arrested.
Although a federal preliminary injunction remains in place which blocks some of the enforcement of a state law that would have made it a felony for certain immigrants to enter Florida and mandated pretrial detention without bond. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld this block in July 2025, limiting the state’s ability to target individuals solely for their immigration status outside of existing federal frameworks. This however does not block the arrests of criminals which leaves the majority of Illegal aliens not yet arrested across our state.