Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri Credit: Pinellas County Sheriff/Instagram
After allegedly being assaulted by her husband, Soumia Bensalah was taken into custody by police in Polk County. Despite having no local criminal charges, she spent the following weeks two counties over, being booked and re-booked into the Pinellas County Jail on behalf of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
A ProPublica investigation released today found that the jail is discreetly violating limits on how long someone can be held without criminal charges.
ICE was supposed to pick Bensalah up within 72 hours. If it didn’t, Pinellas County Jail was required to release her, in part due to the jail not meeting ICE’s own detention standards.
Instead, ProPublica found, Bensalah was briefly released into federal custody, then rebooked her into the jail within hours. The process repeated three days later. Each time, officers shackled her before bringing her to a cramped hold room at an ICE office. Bensalah was ultimately rebooked five times.
One Mexican woman was kept in Pinellas’ custody for 26 days, being re-booked into the jail 10 times.
Former ICE officials and legal experts told ProPublica this is a deliberate and secretive way to circumvent federal law. The Pinellas County Jail has rebooked at least 174 immigrants in this fashion in the last two years, ProPublica’s analysis found.
“There’s no argument that this is a lawful detention,” Jennifer Chacón, a professor of law at Stanford University, told ProPublica of the repeat rebookings.
Additionally, the Pinellas County Jail has held at least 157 immigrants for ICE for longer than three business days in a single booking since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term in January 2025, according to a ProPublica analysis. In the two years prior, it held only five immigrants for longer than three days. After one woman — a Brazilian immigrant who had not been charged with a crime — challenged her nine-day detention in federal court this July, ICE released her, calling her jail stay a “procedural error.”
ProPublica reported that the rebooking procedure ceased in July of this year. They also reported that single detentions over 72 hours—which are not legal—have been increasing.
The jail is overseen by Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, who is billed by state authorities as a legal expert on local police collaboration with ICE.
“Corporal Jamie Miller, a spokesperson for the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office, told ProPublica that the facility holds people for ICE for only up to 72 hours before releasing them. The sheriff’s office declined further comment after ProPublica shared the findings from its analysis and sent a list of questions. The office declined requests for an interview with the sheriff,” ProPublica’s investigation reads.
PCSO did not respond to Creative Loafing Tampa Bay’s request for comment. Sheriff is an elected position in Florida. Gualtieri was re-elected without opposition in 2024.
Gualtieri’s jail is an outlier in the state
This isn’t Gualtieri’s first time getting creative with the law to keep immigrants jailed.
Gualtieri has been pushing for greater integration between ICE and municipal police for nearly a decade. He helped design a model of 287(g) agreement—a formal agreement local police sign with ICE—that allows jails to legally hold immigrants on ICE’s behalf with a much lower administrative burden.
In a 2025 email obtained by CL, Gualtieri told Pinellas police chiefs they were required to “do certain things” regarding immigration enforcement or face removal from office by the governor.
Within days, all of them signed 287(g) agreements, even though they were not required to do so. This has earned the police chiefs significant pushback from their communities.
It’s unclear if Gualtieri knew that the agreements were not required, but he is widely regarded as one of the state’s top legal experts on local law enforcement’s collaboration with ICE. He is a member of the Florida State Immigration Enforcement Council, where he is their go-to source for information on 287(g) agreements.
Last year, Gualtieri initiated a statewide effort to reduce the number of immigrants released from jails after the time limit is up. His plan involved having sheriffs, rather than ICE, transport detainees to ICE facilities.
ICE rejected Gualtieri’s plan, citing legality concerns.
Gualtieri voiced his frustration with this in a Florida State Immigration Enforcement Council meeting last year. “You’ve got to get to ‘yes,’” Gualtieri said to the council. “It’s never been done that way before. So what? Try. You got to step outside the box.”
Charlotte County Sheriff Bill Prummell praised Gualtieri’s effort. “When he came up with the (transport agreement), I thought it was a phenomenal idea,” Prummell said at the meeting. “Unfortunately, … lawyers got involved and, like you stated before, cold feet.”
Another council member asked what would happen if the 48 hours were up and ICE hadn’t come to pick up the detainee.
“Unfortunately, we have to release them,” Gualtieri replied. “I can tell you that the sheriffs go to great pains to not do that.”
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This article appears in August 27 – September 02, 2026.
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