JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – With President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown underway, there have been numerous reports swirling around Northeast Florida regarding potential raids being enforced by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
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News4JAX contacted local law enforcement agencies to find out more about these reports, and if those claims were true.
St. Johns County
One claim came from Jacksonville Immigration Attorney Rebecca Black who told News4JAX, “Locally St. Johns County is already picking up non-licensed and undocumented immigrants. They’re calling CBP and putting them in jail and holding them.”
News4JAX contacted the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office, which responded in an email saying, “This is not accurate.”
Deputies also said the sheriff’s office would follow up for more clarification.
At the time of this publication, SJSO had not followed up.
Duval County
News4JAX also received an email asking about ICE checkpoints at University and San Jose boulevards.
The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office told News4JAX officers arrests for crimes, and ICE agents decide if they need to come and take over. But JSO clarified officers do not make arrests for ICE.
There were also questions about Duval County Schools specifically, with one tipster saying they heard ICE might be coming into schools to “collect students.”
News4JAX reached out to the district and immediately responded “Absolutely false in Duval County.”
School Superintendent Christopher Bernier was also asked about immigration enforcement at the district at a recent town hall.
“The (Trump) executive order does not call for raids in schools. It doesn’t call for that but what it does do is put us on notice that there’s a potentiality of Secret Service, ICE agents, JSO showing up at our schools. If a police officer or a sworn law enforcement officer has a warrant, a court order, then our policies are very clear, in the school district we don’t get in the way,” Bernier said.
Clay County
News4JAX received an inquiry on social media that asked: “ICE picked up 114 individuals in Clay County during a raid today. True?”
The Clay County Sheriff’s Office said it wasn’t aware of any raids like that in the county, suggested contacting the Department of Homeland Security for further details, and pointed to its “robust 287g program” at the detention facility.
Detentions across Florida
While there haven’t been any confirmed reports of unusual ICE activity in Northeast Florida, there have been confirmed raids in other parts of the state, especially South Florida.
DeSantis, who has been very vocal on the state’s immigration goals, has made it clear he expects local law enforcement to help in those efforts.
“I don’t want to house them, I want to deport them,” DeSantis said Wednesday.
During a roundtable in Titusville on Wednesday, Gov. Ron DeSantis said more than 20 undocumented Chinese nationals were detained in South Florida by Florida Department of Law Enforcement agents and Coral Gables Police Department officers.
“We need to do that, otherwise you’re never going to solve this problem,” DeSantis said.
On Tuesday, the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles announced via X that troopers arrested 12 individuals “who were believed to be illegally residing in the State of Florida.”
According to a Washington Post report published on Sunday, ICE officials were directed during a call with Trump officials to “aggressively ramp up the number of people they arrest, from a few hundred per day to at least 1,200 to 1,500.”
According to the report, which cites four people with knowledge of the briefings who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the ICE officials were told that each of the “agency’s field offices should make 75 arrests per day,” and that they would be held accountable if that quota isn’t met.
News4JAX has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for further answers on these various reports and at the time of this publication, we hadn’t heard back.