US Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced Saturday the agency and state law enforcement in Florida have arrested nearly 800 people over four days in a “massive, multi-agency immigration enforcement crackdown.”
ICE’s office in Miami calls the “highly successful” operation “a first-of-its-kind partnership between state and federal partners.”
CNN has reached out to ICE for more details about who was arrested, their legal status and the scope of the operation.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis hailed the operation as “an example of FL and (the Department of Homeland Security) partnering to deliver big results on immigration enforcement and deportations,” according to a statement on X .
“Florida is leading the nation in active cooperation with the Trump administration for immigration enforcement and deportation operations!” DeSantis wrote in a separate post Saturday .
The massive number of reported arrests comes amid President Donald Trump’s ongoing crackdown on illegal immigration and as the Department of Justice moves to prosecute state and local officials accused of impeding that effort.
DeSantis and other Republican leaders in Florida have pushed local officials in the state to sign agreements with ICE under the 287(g) Program, which allows local authorities to be trained by and partner with ICE to enforce aspects of US immigration law. Florida leaders have warned that state law allows for the removal of officials who refuse to cooperate with the federal government’s immigration efforts.
Statewide agencies, including the Florida Highway Patrol, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Florida State Guard, the Florida Department of Agricultural Law Enforcement and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, all signed collaboration agreements with ICE, according to an announcement by DeSantis in February.
In all, more than 200 state, county and municipal law enforcement agencies across Florida have entered into collaboration agreements with ICE, and more than 70 others have agreements pending, according to data from the Department of Homeland Security.
Earlier this month, multiple universities in Florida announced their campus police also signed the ICE agreements, further stoking fears among international students amid the Trump administration’s revocation of hundreds of student visas at colleges across the US.
Pressure to cooperate
Local leaders in several parts of Florida approved cooperation agreements with ICE while expressing opposition to it.
The city council in the Miami suburb of Doral – which has the largest Venezuelan immigrant population in the country – voted unanimously to approve an ICE collaboration agreement earlier this month, but council members made clear they were required to do so under state law.
“We’re being mandated by the state to take certain actions and if we don’t, we’re being threatened with criminal penalties,” City Attorney Lorenzo Cobiella said. “Passing this is painful for all of us. We’re all immigrants … we all have families that derive from different places where, right now, there’s great suffering.”
Thomas Kennedy, spokesperson for the Florida Immigrant Coalition, characterized the operation as “part of this longstanding effort by state government to basically force local police departments to conduct immigration enforcement.”
“These police officers became police officers to be police officers, not immigration agents,” he told CNN Sunday. “They should be out there policing the highways, not terrorizing undocumented people that are just trying to live in the state of Florida, pay taxes and work.”
He added he thinks the flurry of arrests is part of an effort to “create fear” so that undocumented immigrants self-deport.
The immigration crackdown will “create a less friendly, less welcoming, more prosecutory state,” Kennedy said, “where worker shortages increase, where communities are less safe because they’re afraid to report crime, where police departments are overburdened, doing work that they shouldn’t be doing.”
Last month, Fort Myers City Council members voted against the ICE collaboration, only to backtrack and approve it after Florida’s attorney general sent them a letter warning that the governor could remove them from office. Attorney General James Uthmeier called the initial refusal a “serious and direct violation” of Florida law that bans “sanctuary cities.”
Local officials under fire
The US Justice Department has repeatedly asserted that it will investigate any local officials who do not assist federal authorities on immigration matters.
Last week, Hannah Dugan, a Milwaukee County Circuit judge, was arrested by the FBI and charged in federal court for allegedly helping an undocumented immigrant avoid arrest. She made an initial appearance in court and was later released.
In court Friday, Dugan’s attorney said, “Judge Dugan wholeheartedly regrets and protests her arrest. It was not made in the interest of public safety,” according to the AP.
Also last week, former New Mexico magistrate judge Joel Cano and his wife, Nancy Cano, were accused of tampering with evidence linked to the arrest of an undocumented migrant suspected of being a member of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, according to two criminal complaints.
The migrant, Cristhian Ortega-Lopez, is a Venezuelan who was charged earlier this year for unlawful possession of a firearm or ammunition, court documents show.
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