Many police officers within Pinellas County are able to operate as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers because of agreements that have been voluntarily signed by all local police departments in the county last February.<\/p>\n
ICE agents do not have to be called in order for people to be detained. Since August, there have been 10,000 arrests in Florida made under the 287(g) agreements. Unlike the ICE incidents in Minneapolis, the presence of ICE in Florida is much more understated and has not been nearly as publicized even though arrests are being made.<\/p>\n
287(g) agreements allow ICE to \u201cdelegate state and local law enforcement officers the authority to perform specified immigration officer functions under ICE\u2019s direction and oversight,\u201d according to the official ICE.gov<\/a> website.\u00a0<\/p>\n All of the information about encounters, arrests and detaining used in this story can be found on the official website of ICE, www.ice.gov<\/a>, which they are obligated by law to share under the Freedom of Information Act. For Florida specific information, visit the Florida Board of Law Enforcement, www.fdle.state.fl.us<\/a>.<\/p>\n Of Florida State Highway troopers, 98% have been tasked to perform ICE functions. This means that people can be pulled over for minor infractions such as speeding or a broken headlight and then be detained by the officer. Since August, the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles has had 7,539 immigration-related encounters, with 647 of those encounters taking place in and around the Tampa region.\u00a0<\/p>\n An ICE encounter is any interaction between an ICE officer or officer operating under a 287(g) agreement and a person they talk to, integrate or interact with under suspicion of them not being a legal citizen. Any encounter can lead to an arrest if there is enough reasonable suspicion deemed by the officer in charge. The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office has had 335 encounters. The St. Petersburg Police Department has had 22 encounters. Since the start of the year in Florida there have been 5,873 immigration related encounters and within March alone in Florida there have been 1,066.<\/p>\n 287(g) agreements have been signed by agencies that may not seem as obvious such as Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Both of these agencies have had encounters within Florida since August of last year. Florida Fish and Wildlife has had 452 and the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services has had 288 encounters.<\/p>\n Students at Eckerd as well as the general public in Florida, particularly in Pinellas, should be made aware of the situation happening, especially people of color regardless of their immigration status. Many members of the public, including students, attended the No Kings protests held across the Tampa Bay region last Saturday.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSince [ICE] are here in the area,I am excluded and trapped. I feel very isolated. The option to go outside was taken away,\u201d said Angeles Soto Uva, a junior marine science and Spanish major. \u201cI believe that Eckerd would not let them in, but there is no telling what they will do.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In Pinellas County people can be detained due to a highway stop or being asked for a fishing license. People can be detained and made to wait for a hearing even if they are native born citizens. Under the new Supreme Court ruling, \u201capparent ethnicity\u201d can be used as a factor in detaining, however, it cannot be the only factor. All people, including immigrants are still protected against unreasonable search and seizure as dictated by the 4th amendment to the Constitution.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Many police officers within Pinellas County are able to operate as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers because…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230125,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[115,202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-230124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-news","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230124","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=230124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}