Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings threatened to cancel the county’s agreement to hold federal inmates in its jail by March 13 if the feds don’t agree to fully reimburse them for their costs.
Demings sent a letter Friday to Aisha Ogburn, a grants specialist with the U.S. Marshals Service, three days after he told county commissioners he’d set a deadline in hopes of speeding up the prolonged negotiation.
The Intergovernmental Support Agreement, or IGSA, allows Immigrations and Customs Enforcement to temporarily house detainees at the jail and calls for the county to be paid $88 per day. County leaders have contended their actual costs are $180 per day.
Demings’ urgency comes as the jail has been flooded with federal immigration detainees in recent weeks – as many as 185 in a day who were facing no criminal charges – which he has contended creates a financial burden on the county, as well as on the jail’s staffing.
“It has been six months since our original request to renegotiate our IGSA, yet little progress has been made toward resolving this matter. At the same time, Orange County continues to bear the operational and financial burden of housing federal inmates under our IGSA,” he wrote. “The lack of your ability to offer us a fair and reasonable rate of reimbursement within an exceptionally reasonable amount of time has put Orange County in a remarkable position.”
Demings said if negotiations weren’t resolved within one month, the county may cancel the contract altogether.
“As you are aware, one of the options the county may consider will be to terminate our IGSA with the USMS,” he wrote. “While I recognize the impact that the lack of an IGSA may have on the operations of the U.S. Marshals Service, my responsibility to the people of Orange County, Florida is to ensure our citizens are fairly represented under the terms of our agreement with the federal government.”
Setting such a deadline was among decisions made at a Board of County Commissioners meeting Tuesday as part of an hours-long discussion on the county’s cooperation with federal immigration authorities. While advocates and some commissioners urged the county to file a lawsuit to clarify its role and required duties, Demings chose a more careful path.
Corrections officials in August submitted documents to the Marshals in hopes of jumpstarting renegotiating the contract, which dates back more than a decade, and were told it could take 120 days to do so.
Last week, Corrections Chief Louis Quiñones was told that the request had been sent to higher-ups at the Marshals Service.