15-05-2025
'Unconstitutional': Immigration experts knock Florida 'blueprint' for mass deportation
Immigration experts argue that Florida's "blueprint" for mass deportation is not only unconstitutional but also an overreach of state authority, effectively displacing federal law.
On May 12, Florida officials unveiled a 37-page immigration enforcement operations plan they say will be a model for efforts across the country. It's a "road map" for detention and the transportation of detained immigrants, and it includes potential sites for mass detention centers and projected costs.
But immigration attorneys say parts of the plan may result in false imprisonment and exorbitant costs, as the federal government has been reluctant to pay for past and future projects.
'This basically would change how immigration detention is managed, and that flies in the face of several decades of litigation that have established constitutional protections for people in detention and how you even get to be put in detention,' said Elizabeth Ricci, an immigration attorney in Tallahassee.
'If we erode those protections, my concern is, what is going to be eroded, and for who next?'
The concerns portend a deepening divide between state-level crackdowns and federal immigration authority, which could lead to potentially far-reaching consequences for civil liberties and the future of immigration enforcement in the U.S.
For instance, the plan encourages the suspension of federal detention standards to allow county jails to temporarily house detainees. 'It is anomalous that facilities adequate to confine U.S. citizens are not deemed adequate to house illegal aliens,' the plan says. 'This self-limiting proposition works against achieving the President's goals."
But waiving Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) guidelines isn't the state's call, Ricci said.
'Who is Florida to tell the federal government how to detain someone in what conditions?' Ricci said. 'That is not something for the Sunshine State to be doing. Is Florida now going to tell the Postmaster General how it should deliver mail or the Mint under what conditions and money should be printed? No.'
The state and the feds have different approaches, Ricci said. Florida empowers local officials to enforce minimum standards but the federal system uses uniform, outcome-focused regulations with national oversight.
In the plan, the state says the suspension of national detention standards would make space for more people to be housed in county jails and for soft-sided detention centers on state-owned airplane runways "to establish routine air corridors to those nations routinely receiving repatriated illegal aliens. This would be especially useful in prompt removal of aliens under unexecuted Final Orders of Removal."
U.S. border czar Tom Homan has previously said the Trump administration plans to lower detention standards, allowing local law enforcement to detain immigrants using state standards instead of more rigorous federal detention guidelines.
"As long as you follow your own state standards, if that's good enough for a U.S. citizen in your county, it's good enough for an illegal immigrant detained for us,' he told the National Association of Sheriffs earlier this year.
Immigration attorney Neil Rambana, Ricci's husband and law partner, argued that lowering detention standards will create more false imprisonment cases, as many jailers, even as they're deputized by the federal government, aren't getting the proper training in the state's rapid response to Trump's mass deportation mandate.
Rambana said since January, more of his clients have been detained beyond the limits of what's called 287(g), an ICE initiative that allows local law enforcement agencies to help "identify and remove criminal aliens who are amenable to removal from the U.S.," according to ICE.
Both county jails and ICE have failed to notify and communicate with each other, and immigrants are lingering in jails beyond the 48-hour limit that law enforcement is required to hold them by law, Rambana said. After 48 hours, if bail has been posted and ICE has not picked up the detainee, they can be released.
But what if they're not let go, Rambana asks: 'That's a problem that, to me, lays the foundation for false imprisonment. That's something that we, our office, is going to be working with other immigration attorneys to put out there … to keep these guys in check.'
The state says they need more detention centers to prevent detainees from being released due to lack of space in ICE detention facilities.
"At its current state, ICE is overwhelmed with the number of detainees that have been arrested prior to the state assisting with the process. With the state's assistance, this number will grow by multitudes, which will likely become unsustainable if ICE were to remain operating at its current state," the plan says.
The State of Florida Immigration Enforcement Operations Plan outlines the state's attempts to create a "road map" to assist the federal government in its mass deportation agenda. A request for comment from ICE is pending.
"The type of synergy envisioned is transformational, in that it provides sustainable, consistent andrepeatable operations through upward and downward flows in the identification-apprehension-detention-removal cycle and, not least, makes the best possible use of taxpayer dollars," the plan says.
It also includes plans on how the state can participate in mass deportation without the assistance of the federal government.
The state has identified "several brick-and-mortar locations" in northeast and south central Florida that could serve as detention centers and says the Florida Division of Emergency Management could "retrofit" the buildings to comply with federal detention standards.
The plan names Camp Blanding as an example of a detention center location and provides a bulleted list of "areas of improvement" to meet federal standards. Camp Blanding is a training site for the Florida National Guard in Clay County.
The state would use the 12 vendors they already have contracts with for emergency services to upgrade the facilities and advises that these improvements should be arranged at the same time as hurricane season to optimize the availability and funds.
The state has the capacity to house "up to 10,000 undocumented aliens and necessary support staff atlocations designated by the State of Florida or the federal government. These facilities can befully operational within 72 hours and require up to 96 hours to begin setup," the plan states.
The state argues the bureaucratic roadblocks are a result of the "deep state" within the federal government and asks the feds to waive or suspend federal rules to speed up Florida's mass deportation efforts.
The phones of Rambana, Ricci and Carolina Maluje, an immigration attorney in Miami Lakes, have been ringing even more since the Trump administration's mass deportation efforts began.
The first thing Maluje does when she wakes up, she says, is check to see how many new messages she has from family members who say loved ones have been arrested and detained.
'Everyone's nervous. We're scrambling,' she said.
Many of those who have been detained in Florida's mass deportation efforts are not criminals, she said. They are farmworkers, roofers, students and laborers with pending asylum cases who have driver's licenses and Social Security numbers.
Both Rambana and Maluje said they have clients who have been victims of crime who have chosen not to call law enforcement out of fear they will be detained. While the state has touted deputizing all law enforcement officers to become ICE agents or officers with immigration authority, the move has deterred immigrants, even those with documentation, from calling the police when a crime has been committed.
'Us taxpayers for the state of Florida, have we OK'd this? Have we voted on this?' Maluje said.
Previously, Gov. Ron DeSantis has used state funds to send law enforcement agencies to the Texas-Mexico border and to transport Venezuelan migrants to Martha's Vineyard. This year, the anti-illegal immigration package that the Florida Legislature and DeSantis passed during a special session set aside almost $300 million for new enforcement measures.
The immigration enforcement operations plan released on May 12 provides options for the state to purchase transportation for detainees. A 12-passenger van would cost $80,000 to $90,000 and an extra $34,000 for window tinting, a "3-compartment box" to hold detainees, the installation of live video equipment and law enforcement communications.
The state does not say how many vans would be needed, but it does estimate the lease of 21 vehicles for two weeks as approximately $1.5 million and $138,320 to pay the Florida State Guard to drive the vehicles.
The plan says FDEM could also hire 42 OPS staff (or "other personal services," basically temps paid by the hour) as drivers for $30 an hour. If the state used a 49-passenger bus retrofitted for detainees, 21 leased buses for two weeks labor including could cost $44.1 million.
The plan says ICE "must" reimburse the Florida Department of Emergency Management for actual costs for deportation transportation and for purchasing commercial flights for people eligible for voluntary deportation.
But it also says reimbursement by the federal government is unlikely.
'The federal government has shown itself to be very hesitant to commit to any form of reimbursement to past or future immigration operations. There may come a time when, without federal assistance, a long-term immigration support mission may become fiscally untenable,' the plan says.
'It's going to be very expensive for the state if it were to proceed, and I don't think it will, because it's going to be litigated, and then it's going to be expensive in a different way, because taxpayers are going to pay the brunt of defending that litigation,' Ricci said.
Ana Goñi-Lessan, state watchdog reporter for the USA TODAY Network – Florida, can be reached at agonilessan@
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Florida mass deportation 'blueprint' is unconstitutional, lawyers say
