Activists in Lake Worth Beach have accused U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers of kidnapping community members, with the help of local police, as they took part in a citywide protest.
They gathered at the nonprofit Guatemalan Maya Center on Thursday morning, picking up 200 prepared posters that read “ICE kidnapped a community member here” and “Florida Highway Patrol kidnapped someone here."
Organizers spread the black signs out to dozens of public locations across the city —stretching several blocks from near the I-95 highway east to Federal Highway — where community members have witnessed or tracked "the kidnapping and forced disappearance of migrants,” said Mariana Blanco, director of operations at the Center.
The demonstration in Lake Worth Beach, which included signs placed in front of City Hall, was part of a public display condemning the “inhumane” treatment of both legal and undocumented migrants by ICE and local law enforcement.
The Palm Beach Sheriff's Office is one of over 200 Florida police agencies that have entered an agreement under the 287(g) program with ICE to help facilitate immigration detainment and removal, following a push by Gov Ron DeSantis to assist President Trump in "the largest deportation operation in American history.” A state-by-state breakdown using ICE data shows Florida’s daily ICE arrests more than tripled from about 20 per day in 2024 to roughly 64 per day since.
Nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants live in the U.S., according to recent estimates — Florida, with 590,000, has the third highest number of any state in the country.
READ MORE: Florida leads nation with nearly 100 police partnerships with ICE to deport undocumented
Blanco told WLRN that ICE is separating mixed-status families, with both documented and undocumented people, across Palm Beach County.
”We've heard it from school counselors, school administrators, that children aren't showing up. They're not showing up because they don't want the day to come where they go to school and they come home and their parents are not there,” Blaco said.
“And for those children who are US-born, and even if they're not US-born, who were residing here with any sort of legal status, that decision has been made for them.”
Even members of her staff have been affected. A highly skilled Mayan interpreter and well-known community activist was recently detained and removed from the state due to issues with her immigration status. She had lived in the U.S. since the early 1990s.
Organizers say the immigration crackdown is causing racial profiling to increase. Prosecutors in Palm Beach County told WLRN in July they won’t pursue criminal charges against a teenage U.S. citizen from West Palm Beach who last May video-recorded his arrest by law enforcement authorities following a traffic stop in Riviera Beach that involved federal immigration agents.
Inconsistent
Community advocates say Palm Beach Sheriff's Office has had an inconsistent yet generally cordial relationship with the Lake Worth Beach community.
Sheriff Ric Bradshaw previously told WLRN that ICE agents in the Lake Worth Beach community are typically looking for people with criminal records, but the agents might do “collateral arrests” in the process, scooping up people with no criminal records.
“Unfortunately, with them having a 287(g) agreement, that completely negates the trust that was previously built [with PBSO],” Blanco said.
“ You can't say that you are working to protect a community, serving this community, when you're also working with the agencies that are unlawfully detaining them and that are racially profiling them, targeting them, and ripping them out of their their homes,” Blanco added.
Some of the protest signs were immediately taken down by passersby. One interaction turned contentious when a man driving a U-Haul truck yelled at Blanco at an intersection, “I voted for this,” he said. “U.S.A.! The illegals can go back.”
Lindsay McElroy, the immigrant justice organizer, told WLRN the interaction was indicative of the intensity on the ground and how some misinformation about legal immigration process can spread.
“ He was screaming, deport them all. I don't want illegals in my country,” she said. “But many of the families we're helping, they aren't even undocumented. They have work permits.
"We've had a US citizen get picked up. They're detaining anyone who looks brown and they're racially profiling our community."
