South Florida has emerged as a hotspot in immigration enforcement nationwide. A recent analysis by The New York Times found that Florida is outpacing other states in immigration arrests, with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office in Miami averaging about 120 arrests a day.

This is happening without the militarized-style raids we have seen in other parts of the country, such as Minneapolis, Chicago, and Los Angeles. The high propensity of immigration arrests in the state is instead a result of cooperation between local law enforcement and federal agencies, through 287(g) contracts.

Since Gov. Ron DeSantis took office in 2019, he has signed into law a series of bills mandating that certain municipalities enter into these police-ICE collaboration agreements. Current state law, as required by statute 908.11, says that a “sheriff or the chief correctional officer operating a county detention facility must enter into a written agreement with the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement to participate in the immigration program established under s. 287(g).” Many municipalities that do not fit into this category have still opted to sign on after the DeSantis administration and Florida’s unelected Attorney General James Uthmeier threatened to remove local elected officials who refuse to go along with their immigration crackdowns.

The result is a state in which immigration enforcement is pervasive. The Florida Lottery, the Department of Business and Professional Regulation, and even public university police departments have signed on to these police-ICE agreements. The Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) has been the most overzealous in this role, committing thousands of immigration arrests in the last few months after DeSantis announced a partnership between the Florida Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles agency and ICE under 287(g), which authorized FHP troopers to question people about their immigration status during traffic stops. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission — an agency traditionally tasked with enforcing laws regarding hunting, fishing, boating safety, and habitat protection — has recently seen itself reoriented toward immigration enforcement tasks. Ninety percent of its personnel — 800 of its nearly 890 law enforcement officers — have been deputized under 287(g) and given a training so lackluster that an officer said they felt like a “newborn giraffe with wobbly legs trying to make its way around.”