Congressional members in Florida are considering a bill that would force county jails to honor ICE detention requests and hold “potentially deportable people” in custody for a period of 48 hours.

Senator Jose Rodriguez, a Democrat from Miami, countered that requests for detainment should require warrants. “If we are going to be keeping people in state custody, there should be due process,” he said.

The ACLU has urged Floridians to reject the legislation.

“It essentially calls on law enforcement to provide literally unlimited compliance with detainers,” Amien Kacou, an attorney for the ACLU of Florida, told the Sentinel. “It amplifies the problems inherent in the detainer system and provides no safeguards to limit ICE’s mistakes.”

And, it seems, ICE has been making a lot of mistakes. According to a report published by the ACLU, detainment mistakes happen at an alarming rate. Between February 2017 and February 2019, ICE issued detainers for 420 people in Miami-Dade County jail who records show are actually U.S. citizens. ICE rescinded its request in at least 83 of these cases.


“U.S. citizens have been kept in jail away from their jobs and families,” the ACLU report says. “And they have faced the terror of being told they would soon be deported from their only home.”

In Travis County, Texas, ICE issued 814 detainers for people listed as U.S. citizens between 2005 and 2017, an August Cato Institute report shows. The report also estimates that, in those years, ICE may have issued detainers for nearly 20,000 U.S. citizens nationwide.

The bill, which is currently working its way through the Florida Senate, would not allow any “sanctuary city” policies throughout the state. Additionally, a similar bill in the state's house includes penalties for localities not adhering to the law, including a $1,000-a-day fine for "sanctuary policies" and the threat of suspension or removal from office for any authority that does not report citizenship violations.

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