{"id":195166,"date":"2026-03-17T17:24:16","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T17:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/195166\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T17:24:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T17:24:16","slug":"tampa-police-dept-revises-its-immigration-policies-following-florida-ags-warning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/195166\/","title":{"rendered":"Tampa Police Dept. revises its immigration policies following Florida AG\u2019s warning"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Tampa Tampa Mayor Jane Castor addressing reporters in Tampa on Oct. 7, 2024. Credit: Photo by Mitch Perry\/Florida Phoenix<\/a><\/p>\n

The Tampa Police Department has revised its policies on immigration enforcement in response to a demand Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier issued last week. Uthmeier had\u00a0accused the department of having \u201csanctuary policies\u201d<\/a>\u00a0and threatened to remove Mayor Jane Castor from office unless the city backed down.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe city of Tampa has no intention of violating state or federal law,\u201d Castor wrote in a letter to Uthmeier on Monday. \u201cWe will continue to use best efforts to support the enforcement of federal immigration law, as well as state law.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his\u00a0letter<\/a>\u00a0to Castor last week, Uthmeier wrote that his office had become aware of TPD\u2019s policies connected to 287(g) immigration enforcement agreements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).<\/p>\n

TPD \u201costensibly supports these policies because they do not want illegal aliens to be concerned with immigration consequences by cooperating with law enforcement,\u201d Uthmeier wrote. But, he added, \u201cwe want illegal aliens to fear immigration consequences to the extent that they are here unlawfully.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Tampa mayor\u2019s letter came with links to the TPD\u2019s now former policies regarding immigration enforcement and its revised policies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Two policies on immigration have been removed.<\/p>\n

One said\u00a0Tampa police officers were \u201cnot required to share information with federal immigration authorities regarding victims or witnesses of a crime, nor shall they inquire into or investigate the immigration status of cooperative victims, witnesses, or in individuals requesting police services.\u201d<\/p>\n

The second said officers were prohibited from engaging in broad immigration enforcement actions, such as workplace raids, traffic checkpoints, and area saturation sweeps.<\/p>\n

That language has now been replaced by saying that, pursuant to\u00a0Florida Statute 908.104 (7)<\/a>, an officer is not required to provide a federal immigration agency with information related to a victim or a witness to a criminal offense \u201cif the victim or witness is necessary to the investigation or prosecution of a crime and such crime occurred in the U.S., and the victim or witness timely and in good faith responds to the entity or agency\u2019s request for information and cooperates in the investigation or prosecution of such offense.\u201d<\/p>\n

It references\u00a0Florida Statute 908.104 (9)<\/a>, which says state law \u201cdoes not authorize a law enforcement agency to detain an alien unlawfully\u00a0\u00a0present in the United States pursuant to an immigration detainer solely because the alien witnessed or reported a crime or was a victim of a criminal offense.\u201d<\/p>\n

The revised TPD policy maintains a prohibition on biased policing. Enforcement actions \u201cshall never be initiated, influenced, or based upon an individual\u2019s race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, or any other legally protected characteristic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Uthmeier had warned Mayor Castor that the TPD\u2019s immigration policies \u201cmust be reversed immediately, or there will be consequences.\u201d That language was similar to the rhetoric he sent to elected officials in places like Key West, Fort Myers, and Orange County last year contending their local immigration stances were tantamount to \u201csanctuary policies,\u201d which are illegal in Florida.<\/p>\n

Florida Phoenix<\/a> is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This article appears in Mar. 12 \u2013 18, 2026<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tampa Mayor Jane Castor addressing reporters in Tampa on Oct. 7, 2024. Credit: Photo by Mitch Perry\/Florida Phoenix…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":195167,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[4260,5756,412,88451,135,137,136],"class_list":["post-195166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-james-uthmeier","tag-jane-castor","tag-ron-desantis","tag-sanctuary-policies","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}