Troopers with the Florida Highway Patrol are leading immigration enforcement efforts in the state and have focused arrests heavily in one particular area: Palm Beach County.
Approximately one in five arrests by FHP troopers occurred in Palm Beach County, according to a review of Florida’s enforcement database since last August. In all, FHP troopers apprehended 1,229 immigrants in the county; statewide, more than 6,600 immigrants were arrested.
The high number of arrests has puzzled local immigrant advocates, experts and former lawmakers, who say they expected its neighboring counties to the south to have more arrests because Miami-Dade and Broward are home to larger immigrant populations.
“I do get phone calls on a regular basis of people continuing to be detained, and I wonder about that, too,” said Rick Roth, a Belle Glade farmer and former Florida Republican legislator. “I wonder because some of this is political, why Palm Beach County's is getting a lot.”
Roth suggests it’s the county’s large agricultural industry that relies on immigrant labor, making the county a target for enforcement.
Lindsey McElroy, of the Lake Worth Beach-based Guatemalan-Maya Center, believes the reason is more personal. She points to Dave Kerner, the head of Florida Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, which manages FHP.
“He really is familiar with the lay of the land,” McElroy said.
Kerner, who is from Lake Worth, represented a majority-Hispanic statehouse district as a Democrat and served as mayor of Palm Beach County — all before being appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis to oversee FHP in 2023.
“He’s familiar with his former constituents that he used to represent. He knows where they cash their checks, he knows their routes to work,” McElroy said. “It’s very easy for him to direct Florida Highway Patrol and take advantage of his former constituents.”
WLRN emailed Kerner multiple times requesting an interview about the outsized impact of his agency on his home county. WLRN also sent him McElroy’s comments.
Neither he nor FHP’s spokesperson responded to WLRN.
Impact of 287(g) agreement with ICE
FHP has led the charge in Florida to locate and arrest undocumented immigrants through its authority from the 287(g) program, which is an agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
ICE and U.S. Border Patrol conduct their own operations in the state through arrests and transferring custody of immigrants from local jails, which are not reflected in the State Board of Immigration Enforcement database.
FHP’s 287(g) arrests total 6,666, according to the database, as of May 5. The figure is likely a steep undercount, since it only dates back to August 2025. FHP inked its agreement roughly six months earlier.
READ MORE: 'Data masking’? Florida trooper’s traffic stops raise questions about race, ethnicity reporting
At DeSantis’ direction, Kerner signed the agency up for the 287(g) Task Force Model in February 2025.
The model was previously discontinued under President Obama due to allegations of rampant profiling by police in Arizona. It was revived under President Trump last year — empowering local police officers to question the immigration status of people they stop and arrest them on the spot.
At a press conference last September, Kerner detailed the level of collaboration between FHP troopers and ICE and Border Patrol agents.
“When a traffic stop happens and the investigation tends toward the legal status of somebody in that vehicle, we have Border Patrol and we have ICE with us in our vehicles, so they can on the roadside do that proper vetting,” Kerner said.
He said that FHP has stood up units dedicated only to immigration enforcement, in addition to roughly 2,000 troopers trained on 287(g).
FHP’s efforts have proved lucrative for the agency, too.
A leaked ICE ledger, reported by independent journalist Ken Klippenstein in March, displayed 400 police departments assisting ICE, and the funding set aside for their enforcement help.
The largest sum was earmarked for FHP’s parent agency, FLHSMV, the document showed. ICE set aside an extra $89 million in incentive funding for the agency, in addition to prior awards of $13.6 million and $1.1 million, it said.
So, why Palm Beach County?
How many people were arrested in Palm Beach County has proved easier to answer than why.
Alana Greer, director and co-founder of the Community Justice Project, suggested Palm Beach’s focus could be based upon the way FHP is laid out.
It’s broken up into troops. Troop L oversees Okeechobee, Indian River, St. Lucie, Martin, Palm Beach and Broward counties, according to an agency map.
Troop L is headquartered in Lake Worth — a majority-Hispanic city where activists say immigrants have been the focus of FHP troopers.
There’s a significant Guatemalan contingent in Lake Worth; more than 9,000, according to recent census data.
Statewide, roughly two-thirds of all FHP’s arrests were of Guatemalans and Mexicans, according to the database.
Greer, with the Community Justice Project, said her organization hears anecdotally that darker-skinned immigrants, like Central Americans, are more likely to be targeted for immigration enforcement.
"It's not because that is the largest population in Florida, right? We have huge populations of white immigrants, of white, Latino immigrants … and we don't see those numbers coming out,” Greer said.
She said the figures represent a “deeply concerning pattern of racial profiling.”
Kerner: Palm Beach County native
In 2012, then-28-year-old Kerner ran for political office for the first time for the District 87 statehouse seat.
The district, which has since been redrawn, included parts of Lake Worth, West Palm Beach and western parts of the county.
Kerner had deep roots in Lake Worth; his father served as the city’s police chief. Kerner ran as a Democrat.
In July 2012, the Palm Beach Post reported District 87 had the largest concentration of Hispanic residents in the county.
“Kerner, an attorney, said he doesn't foresee problems being a voice for members of the Hispanic community, many of whom he already has built relationships with,” the Post reported.
Running against a Hispanic primary opponent, Kerner was quoted as saying that the Hispanic community “knows that I'm going to support them.”
He served for two terms. He then ran for District 3 commissioner in Palm Beach County in 2016 as a Democrat and won handily.
Kerner served as county mayor through 2022 and led the county’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
His political fortunes began to change when he endorsed DeSantis for governor in 2022 over the Democratic challenger, Charlie Crist.
With DeSantis’ re-election secured, Kerner was picked to lead FLHSMV the following year.
The former Palm Beach County mayor has since embraced DeSantis’ position on immigration and operationalized enforcement into FHP.
At several press conferences in the past year, he said his transformation of FHP into an immigration agency is meant to serve as a model for other states to take up.
“He really is familiar with the lay of the land."Lindsey McElroy, The Guatemalan-Maya Center
“Florida is leading the nation in standing up state and local immigration enforcement units,” Kerner said last fall, “And the numbers show I remain deeply committed to this mission.”
‘They’re scared,’ says immigrant support center director
Maricela Torres, director of the Esperanza Center in West Palm Beach, said people impacted by enforcement are not just numbers.
The center operates in the Northwood neighborhood of the city, in a yellow and white-pastel building. Torres co-founded it in 2019, seeking to fill a gap in services to West Palm’s Latino and Hispanic communities.
They focused on education, healthcare and legal rights seminars. It wasn’t until last year, when Florida’s surge in enforcement started, that the Esperanza Center began offering a free food pantry out of its tiny kitchen.
“They'll knock on our door, especially the day laborers, the workers. They come by and they'll ask, ‘Hey, you know, I didn't get a job today. I'm hungry. Do you have anything?’” Torres said.
Sometimes the best they can offer is apple sauce or masa corn flour to make tortillas. They also have a diaper program for mothers of babies.
Torres sits in a modest office space, surrounded by art projects made by the children of the immigrants they serve.
She said many families in Palm Beach County have lost a husband, a breadwinner, to immigration enforcement. The children, who are often U.S. citizens, have had to pull out of Palm Beach County schools to help out at home.
Others are afraid of being ripped apart — of being caught in the detention dragnet.
“They're scared every time they see a police officer. They're scared to send their kids to school,” Torres said. “They're scared when their husbands go to work. Is he gonna come back? Is this the last time I'm gonna see him?”
