Federal and state Democratic lawmakers gathered in West Palm Beach to hear from immigrant advocates, lawyers and pastors about aggressive immigration enforcement in Palm Beach County.
On Friday morning, U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel, D-Palm Beach County, sat alongside U.S. Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Boston, the Democratic minority whip and number two in the Democratic caucus.
The two were in South Florida as their colleagues in the U.S. Senate debated a budget bill with more guardrails for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
DHS and ICE have faced growing scrutiny after immigration agents killed two protestors in Minneapolis in recent weeks. Frankel voted against increased funding for DHS and ICE in a U.S. House of Representatives measure that passed last week.
At the roundtable event in West Palm Beach City Hall, they heard from local activists and immigration groups, who told the leaders in no uncertain terms the crisis they were facing and have been facing for close to a year.
Palm Beach County is “the belly of the beast” for immigration action, according to Renata Bozzetto, deputy director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition. That’s largely due to local and state law enforcement working with ICE to arrest immigrants, she said.
“It is that collaboration with the police that is harming our communities, and it's as invisible and insidious as domestic violence,” Bozzetto said.
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Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida legislators have pressured police agencies big and small to sign onto 287(g) agreements, which are local law enforcement partnerships with ICE.
”We have the highest amount of detentions of any county in the entire state of Florida, and I believe that Florida probably has some of the highest detentions in the country,” said Lindsay McElroy for the Guatemalan-Maya Center, a social services organization in Lake Worth Beach.
McElroy specifically called out the Florida Highway Patrol and the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.
“ Nobody's against having a lawful way to come in and leave the country. We want that. But it doesn't have to be cruel. We should have due process. And we should have humanity,” Frankel said on Friday.
FL Sen. Lori Berman, the Democratic minority leader whose district includes Palm Beach County, said more citizens need to come to Tallahassee to tell state legislators about the effects immigration enforcement is having on them.
“ I'm sorry to hear about Palm Beach County being the belly of the beast,” Berman said. “It's really disturbing to me as a resident and a legislator from this area.”
Berman said Democratic bills to require data collection on immigration enforcement in the state have received little traction in the Florida Republican supermajority.
Pastors in attendance said a large issue looming over the heads of their congregants was the ending of Temporary Protected Status for Haitians, which DHS Secretary Kristi Noem set for Feb. 3.
South Florida is home to hundreds of thousands of foreign-born Haitians and those with Haitian families, who will soon lose legal status to be in the United States.
“ We're hearing this all across Palm Beach County. Church is supposed to be the one place where we can come together and unite together, sing together, pray together, but we're having families who are afraid to assemble in our churches because of fear,” Pastor Richard Davis, of Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church.
“ If you can't attend churches and feel safe, you can't go to school and feel safe because of fear,” Davis said, “Where can one attend?”
