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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nFederal officials are \u201coverwhelmed\u201d by the number of undocumented immigrants being locked up as part of President Donald Trump\u2019s mass deportation plan because of a detention-bed shortage, according to a key player in Florida\u2019s efforts to assist the White House.
The capacity issue is expected to escalate in Florida in the coming weeks as sheriffs and police chiefs ramp up arrests and detention of undocumented immigrants, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd told Gov. Ron DeSantis and state Cabinet members, who met Tuesday as the State Board of Immigration Enforcement.
\u201cThis housing system \u2026 is already overwhelmed. They cannot deal with this,\u201d Judd, who also serves as chairman of the State Immigration Enforcement Council, said, referring to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Lawmakers created the State Board of Immigration Enforcement and its related council during a February special legislative session aimed at helping Trump\u2019s sweep of people who are in the country illegally.
The board \u2014 made up of DeSantis, Attorney General James Uthmeier, state Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia and Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson \u2014 on Tuesday advanced a plan setting up a $250 million grant program for local law-enforcement agencies to help with the federal immigration dragnet.
The grant program, also part of the legislation passed in February, is based on recommendations from the council, which is made up of sheriffs and police chiefs. Judd told the governor and Cabinet members that grants should be prioritized for training of state and local officers so they can be allowed to assist in federal immigration-enforcement programs.
Another part of the legislation passed during the special session requires sheriffs and county jail administrators to cooperate with federal immigration officials and participate in what is known as the 287(g) program, which allows them to temporarily detain people who are suspected of being in the country without authorization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But as more immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally are arrested and detained locally, Judd warned that the federal government lacks the capacity to house them on a more-permanent basis.
Florida sheriffs have almost 2,000 county jail beds that could be used to house undocumented immigrants who haven\u2019t been charged with other crimes for up to 48 hours, Judd told the state board. But he said the sheriffs have \u201cbeen at loggerheads\u201d with ICE officials over national detention standards required for people in federal custody, which he called \u201conerous.\u201d
\u201cWe asked simply for a waiver that we could house these folks according to the Florida model jail standards. After all, if it’s good enough for those that are innocent until proven guilty, and they’re United States citizens, certainly those housing rules should be sufficient for those that are in this country illegally,\u201d Judd said, adding that discussions about a waiver of the national standards were ongoing.
The state\u2019s housing capacity for the immigration effort is \u201ca drop in the bucket,\u201d Judd told the board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe speed we\u2019re operating at is like cruising down the road at 20 miles an hour. When we put the pedal to the metal and get up to the speed limit, there is no way on God\u2019s green earth they can handle this capacity,\u201d he added.
Five-hundred deputies in Florida in the past two weeks have received credentials to participate in the immigration-enforcement effort, according to Larry Keefe, executive director of the State Board of Immigration Enforcement.
State and local officials in Florida who have authority to \u201cfind illegal aliens and arrest them \u2026 have the capability and capacity to do far more, to conduct far more arrests than we are doing right now,\u201d Keefe told the board.
The result is what Keefe called a \u201cbottleneck \u2026 that really is having what we call a modulating effect to where we have far more capability to arrest illegal aliens than we have accommodations, in terms of detention and transportation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Increasing demand for housing comes amid legal wrangling over an immigrant-detention complex in the Everglades, dubbed \u201cAlligator Alcatraz,\u201d that can hold up to 3,000 people. State officials began holding people at the center this month but have not confirmed the number of detainees\u2019 onsite.
Keefe said Tuesday he first scouted the Everglades site, which was erected adjacent to a remote airstrip, in February on a tour with state Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie and Florida National Guard Adjutant Gen. John Haas.
Plans to launch a similar facility at North Florida\u2019s Camp Blanding, a training facility for National Guard troops, are on hold until the Everglades complex is full, DeSantis said last week.
Florida\u2019s participation in the national immigration-enforcement effort \u201cwill have huge positives,\u201d the governor said Tuesday. But DeSantis cautioned that the Trump administration needs to do its part, pointing to a bill recently passed by Congress that set aside more than $170 billion for immigration enforcement.
\u201cAt the end of the day, the ability to house and process these illegals is the responsibility of the federal government. We\u2019ve gone above and beyond to assist this mission \u2026 but they absolutely are going to need to take that massive amount of money they just got and be able to provide a better ability to hold, process and deport illegals, totally separate from anything our sheriffs are doing or our state agencies are doing,\u201d DeSantis said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
DeSantis emphasized that detainees at state facilities need to be processed quickly.
\u201cWhat I don\u2019t want to do is just babysit people for six months. \u2026 I don\u2019t think that\u2019s what our role is. Our role is to assist with deportation,\u201d he said.
In addition to reimbursement for training, the immigration-enforcement grant program approved Tuesday will allow state and local agencies to be reimbursed for detention and housing costs, transportation, equipment, travel and lodging and $1,000 bonuses for specially trained law-enforcement officers.
The board also advanced guidelines for a data-collection system that will require state and local law-enforcement agencies to track and share information about interactions with undocumented immigrants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Judd said his \u201cbiggest fear\u201d is about what will happen when more police officers and deputies are trained to join the immigration effort.
\u201cIt\u2019s quite frankly like shooting fish in a barrel. There\u2019s that many of them (undocumented immigrants) out here,\u201d Judd said. \u201cThey\u2019re immediately going to meet with what I call capacity resistance, because there’s not going to be any place to put them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The capacity issue is expected to escalate in Florida in the coming weeks as sheriffs and police chiefs ramp up arrests and detention of undocumented immigrants. Federal officials are \u201coverwhelmed\u201d… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42982,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"23","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvaTAud3AuY29tXC9sYWtlbGFuZGdhemV0dGUuaW5mb1wvbmV3c1wvd3AtY29udGVudFwvdXBsb2Fkc1wvMjAyNFwvMDNcL3NoZXJpZmYtanVkZC5qcGc_Zml0PTQ0OSUyQzU2MiZzc2w9MSIsInR4dCI6IlBvbGsgQ291bnR5IFNoZXJpZmYgR3JhZHkgSnVkZCB0ZWxscyBHb3YuIERlU2FudGlzIHRoYXQgaW1taWdyYXRpb24gYXJyZXN0cyBoYXZlICYjODIxNjtvdmVyd2hlbG1lZCYjODIxNzsgdGhlIHN5c3RlbSIsInRlbXBsYXRlIjoiaGlnaHdheSIsImJsb2dfaWQiOjE2MzA0MDY2MX0.52k3ssDcTanuutiihKVsXRanay5fVlQhScB0IUNyX34MQ"},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":42982,"url":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/sheriff-judd.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[23],"tags":[11881],"class_list":["post-56932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sheriffs-corner","tag-polk-county-sheriff-grady-judd-tells-gov-desantis-that-immigration-arrests-have-overwhelmed-the-system"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56932"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56933,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56932\/revisions\/56933"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}