Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and federal immigration authorities are celebrating what they call the “first of its kind” partnership to arrest undocumented migrants — a joint operation they say collared 1,120 people last week across the state, almost two-thirds of whom were wanted or convicted criminals.
When questioned about the other, non-criminal third of the migrants arrested during the six-day effort called “Operation Tidal Wave,” DeSantis and federal officials insisted those persons too should be considered criminals by virtue of being in the U.S. illegally.
Either way, they said, Operation Tidal Wave resulted in the largest number of undocumented migrants detained in a single state in a single week.
“This has been the first of its kind throughout the United States,” DeSantis, a Republican immigration hardliner, said at a press conference Thursday morning at the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency facility in Miramar.
“This is the largest immigration enforcement operation that we’ve seen in quite some time throughout the entire country.”
DeSantis has been seemingly single-minded this year in showcasing Florida as President Donald Trump’s most loyal ally among U.S. states in a massive campaign to detain and deport possibly millions of undocumented migrants. In a special session just before Trump took office again in January, the Florida Legislature passed new immigration laws, including one requiring local law enforcement to assist federal immigration enforcement.
READ MORE: Floridians are getting glimpses of what aggressive immigration enforcement looks like
At a podium next to large mugshot posters of four of the arrested migrants, DeSantis stressed that Tidal Wave is the most prominent example of how “Florida’s really led the effort” to partner its state and local police with federal agencies like ICE in what are called 287(g) agreements.
In addition to state entities like the Florida Highway Patrol and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, DeSantis pointed out that “all 67 [Florida] counties have 287(g) agreements with their sheriff’s departments, and we’re adding more and more [municipal] police departments every day.”
More than 13 Florida sheriff’s agencies took part in Operation Tidal Wave.
ICE has 506 agreements across 38 states, with an additional 74 agencies pending approval. Florida tops the list of states with ICE agreements.
Speaking in a hangar-like garage at the Miramar facility, beneath a massive armored ICE vehicle and flanked by officers from several Florida and federal agencies, ICE Deputy Director Madison Sheahan said Florida law enforcement “all came to the table … and met the moment that was asked of them … to create this historic partnership.”
Sheahan also said Tidal Wave would not be the last such operation in Florida — and will be a model ICE will carry into other states as part of Trump’s migrant dragnet.
Among those arrested across last week were a Venezuelan migrant, Ciro Ramón Castañeda Pérez, whom ICE calls a “known member” of the Venezuelan criminal gang known as Tren de Aragua; Rafael Juárez Cabrera, a Guatemalan who ICE says is a “documented” member of the Central American gang known as MS-13; and Alejandro Flores, a Mexican migrant wanted for alien smuggling.
Reporters at the press conference asked if the 1,120 arrested would receive constitutional due legal process — a heightened concern given the Trump administration having recently deported scores of undocumented Venezuelan migrants, many without criminal histories, to a prison in El Salvador after they were accused under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, with no due process, of being Tren de Aragua members.
DeSantis took issue with that narrative, suggesting as he pointed at the nearby mugshots that many in the media “have no sympathy for people that have been victimized by illegal aliens.”
Journalists, however, also reminded DeSantis and Sheahan — as well as the U.S. Border Patrol’s chief Miami sector agent, Jeffrey Dinise, and Florida’s new State Board of Immigration Enforcement director, Larry Keefe, who also spoke — that the Trump administration early on advised that its deportation sweep would focus on genuinely criminal undocumented migrants instead of law-abiding and hardworking migrants.
Sheahan retorted, “I’ll stand by the fact that if you’re in this country illegally, you are a criminal.”
Immigrant advocates charge that while that outlook may be technically valid, Trump and his anti-immigration MAGA movement are increasingly using that rhetoric to associate all undocumented migrants with violently criminal foreign “terrorists.” They point out the gang members from South and Central America who’ve entered the U.S. illegally represent a miniscule share of the total undocumented population in the U.S., which experts estimate at about 11 million, including an estimated 600,000 in Florida.
The Trump administration counters, however, that under President Biden, too many unvetted migrants were allowed into the country both legally and illegally, leaving President Trump now with no option but to unleash what he promises will be the largest deportation crusade in U.S. history.
At the Miramar press conference, DeSantis and Keefe also went after what they called “lawfare” federal court orders that have put the brakes on that crusade in recent weeks — especially the use of the Alien Enemies Act — and called on the Supreme Court to undo the “activist” judges’ rulings.
DeSantis and the other officials also pointed out that the U.S. southern border this year is seeing the lowest number of illegal crossings in decades, thanks to the deterrent message efforts like Operation Tidal Wave are sending would-be migrants abroad.
