Florida Sits at the Center of Record Federal Immigration Enforcement With 287(g) Deals in All 67 Counties

Federal immigration enforcement reached a new monthly peak in August, with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement recording 50,925 detentions nationally, according to Department of Homeland Security statistics released in early September. It was the third consecutive month setting a record, following roughly 43,900 in June and 50,208 in July.

Florida sits at the center of that expansion. The state ranked second nationally in detentions from January through August with roughly 29,624. Miami led Florida cities with 4,862 arrests over that period, followed by Orlando with 3,680 and Tampa with 3,271.

The mechanism driving much of Florida's volume is the 287(g) program, a provision of federal immigration law that allows ICE to delegate certain immigration enforcement functions to state and local officers. Florida has more such agreements than any other state, with reporting placing the total at 327 partnership agreements, an increase the governor's office has described as a 577 percent rise.

How 287(g) actually works

The program takes its name from a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Under a 287(g) agreement, ICE trains and supervises designated state or local officers who then perform specified immigration enforcement functions within their existing jurisdiction.

There are several models. The jail enforcement model allows trained officers to identify and process removable noncitizens already in local custody on criminal charges. The warrant service officer model authorizes local officers to serve ICE administrative warrants on individuals already in a facility.

The task force model, which allows officers to make immigration arrests in the field during routine duties, is the broadest version and the one that has generated the most legal and policy debate.

Florida law requires cooperation. State legislation enacted in recent years directs county jails and law enforcement agencies to enter into agreements with federal immigration authorities, which is why all 67 Florida counties have signed.

The scale in Florida

Analysis of enforcement data has indicated that in the early months of the year, roughly 29 percent of all immigration arrests in Florida occurred through a 287(g) program rather than through direct ICE action.

Within Miami-Dade County, the Miami Police Department was identified as the local agency recording the most detentions under 287(g) authority, with 451 arrests between August 2025 and late August 2026.

State-level operations have added to the totals. The governor's office has highlighted results from coordinated federal and state operations, including one campaign that officials said surpassed 10,000 arrests, and ICE has reported a separate weeklong joint operation producing 1,120 arrests that the agency described as the largest such operation in Florida's history.

Those operations combine ICE personnel with Florida Highway Patrol, the Florida National Guard, county sheriffs and municipal police departments.

Why Florida matters to national policy

Florida's participation is disproportionate to its population because the state has aligned its own law enforcement infrastructure with federal enforcement priorities more completely than any other large state.

That makes Florida the practical proving ground for how far the 287(g) model can be scaled. Questions about training adequacy, supervision, civil liability and Fourth Amendment compliance are being answered in Florida first because Florida is where the program operates at the largest scale.

It also makes Florida the place where the community-level effects are most measurable, including effects on crime reporting, on willingness to cooperate with police as witnesses, and on labor force participation in industries with significant immigrant workforces.

Florida's economy is unusually dependent on those industries. Agriculture, construction, hospitality and health support services all rely on immigrant labor at rates above the national average.

Detention capacity and contracting

Enforcement at this volume requires detention capacity, and the federal government has expanded it aggressively through private contracting. ICE awarded a contract reported at $313 million to GardaWorld Federal, the contractor that operated the Everglades detention facility informally known as Alligator Alcatraz, to convert and operate a facility with capacity for up to 1,500 detainees.

The Everglades facility itself was closed earlier this year with detainees relocated, though federal litigation over its operation has continued past the closure.

ICE has also entered agreements with multiple Florida state agencies for detention and custody of individuals subject to federal immigration enforcement, an arrangement that places state facilities and state personnel in the federal detention system.

A Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General report issued in September found that an inspected facility complied with intake and use-of-force standards but did not comply with standards covering environmental health and safety, special management units, medical care, food service, personal hygiene and recreation.

The oversight questions

The inspector general findings are the kind of detail that tends to get lost in the debate over enforcement levels, but they describe conditions rather than policy, and they apply regardless of an observer's view on immigration law.

The Government Accountability Office has separately examined immigration detention planning, raising questions about the efficiency of capacity expansion and the management of associated federal spending.

Procurement decisions have also drawn scrutiny. ICE purchased 11 warehouses for a reported $1 billion and has since indicated it intends to sell seven of them, a sequence that invites questions about the planning behind the original acquisition.

Civil liberties organizations have documented conditions and individual cases across the detention system, and those accounts have generated litigation in federal courts including in Florida's districts.

The economic dimension

Florida employers in agriculture and construction have described labor shortages tied to enforcement activity, a pattern that has recurred in the state following previous enforcement surges and legislative changes.

Agricultural producers face the sharpest version of the problem because crop harvest windows are inflexible. Labor that is unavailable during a harvest window represents a permanently lost crop rather than deferred production.

Construction labor shortages translate into higher costs and longer timelines, which flow into housing prices in a state where housing affordability is already a dominant political issue.

The hospitality sector, central to Florida's tourism economy, has reported similar staffing pressures, particularly in back-of-house roles.

What it means for Floridians

For citizens and lawful residents, the most direct effect is on local law enforcement resources. Officers performing immigration functions are officers not performing other functions, and sheriffs have made varying judgments about how to allocate that capacity.

For mixed-status families, which are common across Florida communities, the enforcement environment shapes decisions about driving, working, seeking medical care and sending children to school.

For local governments, 287(g) participation carries potential civil liability exposure, and county attorneys have raised questions about indemnification in the event of a wrongful detention claim.

For the state's political environment, immigration enforcement has been a defining issue and features in the November 3 elections, including the governor's race between Byron Donalds and David Jolly.

The county-by-county variation

Although every Florida county has a 287(g) agreement, participation looks different depending on which model a sheriff has adopted and how aggressively the agency chooses to operate under it. A jail enforcement agreement, which screens people already booked on criminal charges, produces a very different enforcement footprint than a task force agreement permitting field arrests.

Large urban counties with substantial immigrant populations, including Miami-Dade, Broward, Orange and Hillsborough, account for a disproportionate share of Florida's totals simply because of demographics. Miami's 4,862 arrests between January and August, Orlando's 3,680 and Tampa's 3,271 reflect that concentration.

Rural counties with agricultural economies present a different dynamic. Enforcement activity there can affect a local labor market immediately and visibly, and some sheriffs in agricultural counties have been more measured in how they exercise delegated authority.

Because Florida law requires the agreements, sheriffs do not have the option of declining participation entirely. What they retain is discretion over how the agreement is implemented, which is where the county-level variation originates.

What the data does and does not show

Enforcement statistics are reported in categories that do not always mean what they appear to mean. A detention figure counts people taken into custody in a given period; it is not a count of removals, and the two numbers can diverge substantially depending on how cases resolve.

Descriptions of arrests as involving criminal aliens also require care. The category includes people with criminal convictions, people with pending charges, and in some reporting people whose only violation is of immigration law, which is civil rather than criminal in most instances.

Independent analyses of ICE arrest data have found that the share of arrests involving people with no criminal conviction has grown alongside total volumes, a finding that bears on how the enforcement expansion should be understood.

Those distinctions matter for policy evaluation but are frequently lost in the presentation of aggregate numbers by agencies and advocates alike.

What's next

Enforcement volumes have risen for three consecutive months, and there is no indication in current federal policy of a change in direction.

Detention capacity expansion will continue through federal contracting, and the associated facilities will be subject to inspector general review and to litigation.

Federal courts, including the Eleventh Circuit and Florida's district courts, will continue to handle challenges to enforcement practices, detention conditions and the scope of delegated authority under 287(g).

For Florida, the practical question is whether an enforcement posture operating at this scale can be sustained alongside an economy structurally dependent on the workforce it targets.