Republican Sheriffs In Florida Are Openly Rejecting Trump’s Push for Mass Deportations

Photo via Polk County Sheriff’s Office on Facebook.

Republican sheriffs appointed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) to an immigration committee made a noteworthy break with the hardline policies pushed by the governor and President Donald Trump, openly declaring their opposition to mass deportations of undocumented immigrants without criminal records.

Trump’s immigration crackdown has sparked nationwide protests and multiple court challenges opposing ICE’s enforcement tactics, accusations about conflicts of interests, and especially two fatal shootings of U.S. citizens in Minneapolis, Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

The president announced last week that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was “moving” to a new position and he was nominating Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) to take her place, days after Noem was the target of a bipartisan evisceration in Senate and House Committee hearings, as members from both sides of the aisle lambasted her leadership of the agency.

Recent polling shows public opinion has significantly soured on the Trump administration’s immigration policies, even among Republicans — and the county sheriffs on Florida’s State Immigration Enforcement Council seem to be included in that group.

According to a report by Liv Caputo at the Florida Phoenix, the council meeting Monday on Microsoft Teams featured sharp critiques from the sheriffs — a unexpected development when viewed in light of what this council is and how it was formed.

The council was launched last year as an advisory committee for the new State Board of Immigration that DeSantis had pushed as part of his efforts to match Trump’s hardline approach to immigration, including forcing local governments to cooperate with ICE and opening migrant detention centers like the controversial one in the Everglades designated as “Alligator Alcatraz.”

All four members of the State Board of Immigration are Republicans: DeSantis and the three members of Florida’s Cabinet, Attorney General James Uthmeier, Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia, and Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson. That board, plus Senate President Ben Albritton and House Speaker Danny Perez (again, both Republicans), selected the eight sheriffs for the council.

The council’s chair is Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, who occasionally finds his name in national headlines for his unapologetically outspoken commentary. Caputo’s description of Judd as a “leading conservative” isn’t likely to garner many quibbles from Florida politicos.

During the meeting, Judd spoke about immigrants who were in the U.S. illegally but had not committed other crimes, and said that he did not want to give them “a free pass,” but these were people who had children in school, who were working and attending church, and were a part of their communities.

“Those are the folks that we need in this country that we embrace,” said Judd. “We are a country of immigrants.”

“While Congress sits on their hands and does nothing about this, we are on the ground floor with this day in and day out — looking in the eyes of these folks that, yes, came here inappropriately. But some came here inappropriately only to do better for themselves and their family,” he said.

“At least six of the eight sheriffs on the council echoed Judd,” wrote Caputo. “One said the state has cast ‘too wide of a net;’ another urged Judd to write to Congress, and a third offered harsh criticisms of ICE tactics.”

The end result of the meeting was that the sheriffs agreed to “jointly draft and edit the letter to Trump and Congress, imploring the administration to stop deporting undocumented immigrants without a criminal record,” Caputo added.

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