Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during a news conference in Miami in 2023. Rebecca Blackwell/AP
On February 13, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill that would allow state law enforcement to arrest and prosecute undocumented immigrants for being in the state without legal status. It was quickly paused. On April 4, US District Judge Kathleen M. Williams temporarily blocked the law from being enforced, saying enforcing immigration is strictly the work of the federal government.
But law enforcement from at least one agency, the Florida Highway Patrol, continued to make arrests under the law, according to local reporting and a Mother Jones analysis. The arrests were in clear violation of Williams’ order.
At a hearing Friday, attorneys representing immigrant advocacy groups told Williams that they know of at least 15 such arrests, the Miami Herald reported. Williams said she was “astounded” that the arrests continued in spite of her order. “When I issued the temporary restraining order, it never occurred to me that police officers would not be bound by it,” Williams said at the hearing. “It never occurred to me that the state attorneys would not give direction to law enforcement so that we would not have these unfortunate arrests.”
Mother Jones has identified at least two of these arrests after reviewing booking logs for several Florida jails. On April 8, four days after the judge’s ruling, a Florida Highway Patrol trooper stopped a 41-year-old man for driving 95 mph in a 70 mph zone in Polk County in central Florida, according to an arrest affidavit. The driver showed the trooper a photo on his phone of his Brazilian driver’s license and passport. The trooper asked dispatch to share the driver’s information with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and found that the man was under removal proceedings. He was arrested on charges of driving without a Florida license and entry of an “unauthorized alien.” He was booked into the Polk County jail, where he is being held for ICE.
In an April 15 traffic stop, another Highway Patrol trooper stopped a 34-year-old driver in Pinellas County on the Gulf Coast for a “window tint violation,” according to an arrest affidavit. The man was arrested for driving without a valid license, as well as a felony charge under the temporarily blocked law because he had been previously deported in 2013, the trooper wrote. The man was booked into the Pinellas County jail and subsequently released to ICE.
The first arrest to come to light was reported by the Florida Phoenix last week, when a Highway Patrol trooper arrested a 20-year-old US citizen from Georgia during a traffic stop. According to his arrest affidavit, the Phoenix reported, he was the passenger in a car that was going over the speed limit. He was later released from jail.
At the hearing, an attorney from the state attorney general’s office explained that the state believed Williams’ order applied only to top officials and not all law enforcement officers, the Herald reported. Williams extended her original order an additional 11 days, with a hearing scheduled for April 29. After the hearing, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier instructed all law enforcement officers to comply with the order.
