In Lake Worth Beach last September, a Florida Highway Patrol trooper pulled over Jose Hernandez Alvarez and detained him after federal immigration authorities said he lacked legal status to be in the U.S.
Trooper John Petrofsky identified the man from El Salvador as “white,” according to his citation and arrest report.
WLRN reviewed 107 traffic cases in Palm Beach County involving Petrofsky — who patrols a majority-Hispanic city — and found he did not identify a single “Hispanic” driver during a nearly one-year period ending in January.
A local immigration advocate and a national policing expert say the failure to accurately identify a defendant’s race or ethnic origin makes it difficult to independently monitor alleged racial profiling by law enforcement agencies.
“That should ring the alarm bells for their supervisors at Florida Highway Patrol and should cause them to do a review of that officer’s stops,” said Josh Parker with the New York University Policing Project.
Petrofsky patrols Lake Worth — an epicenter for immigration enforcement in Palm Beach County — and has been involved in controversial arrests like the detention of a U.S. citizen last May and another in December.
In addition to Hernandez Alvarez, the trooper detained or transported three others on immigration charges over the 11-month period, including Juan Pedro Caal-Coc, of Guatemala; Jimmy Santiago Cruz-Bonilla, of El Salvador; and Yony Alexi Umanzor-Hernandez, also of El Salvador.
He marked all of them as white.
The trooper’s citations and arrests represent anecdotal evidence, and come as a Lake Worth immigrant rights group says it has repeatedly heard from constituents that FHP troopers are using minor traffic stops to probe immigration status.
“ They've been the most aggressive in our cities,” Mariana Blanco, with the Guatemalan Maya Center, said at a recent event. “They're the ones that are targeting, racially profiling our people.”
READ MORE: 'ICE kidnapped a community member here': Protesters raise concerns over immigration crackdown
FHP did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Petrofsky did not respond to a request for comment.
A 2021 investigation by news outlet ProPublica reported how police in Louisiana routinely misidentified Hispanic drivers as white, masking potential racial profiling. State police did the same in Texas, according to an Austin television station investigation — misidentifying “more than 1.9 million drivers with traditionally Hispanic names” between 2010 and 2015.
In February 2025, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced an agreement between ICE and Florida Highway Patrol, in the form of the 287(g) program, which allows state troopers to enforce federal immigration law on their own.
Since then, FHP has substantially led immigration actions in the state, resulting in thousands of people arrested. The agency has more than 1,900 sworn troopers, and more than 1,800 have received 287(g) training, FHP has said.
Palm Beach County leads the state in encounters between “suspected unauthorized aliens” and law enforcement, according to state data. FHP troopers have conducted over 1,000 arrests there since last August.
From his immigration arrests, records show Petrofsky pulled over motorists the cars for a minor violation, like dark window tint or failing to use a turn signal, and discovered that their licenses were expired or they didn’t have one — which is illegal. In all three cases, he verified their immigration status with either U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Miami or Border Patrol before detaining them. He transported two immigrants to the jail run by the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office and two to a Border Patrol facility, the records say.
In total, there were 87 drivers Petrofsky cited or arrested whom he identified as white. Nineteen were Black and one was “other,” according to WLRN’s review.
Examining the white surnames: six included “Hernandez,” four “Martinez,” four “Cruz,” three “Perez,” three “Rodriguez,” three “Gomez” and two “Lopez” — all of which are typically Hispanic or Latino surnames.
Petrofsky himself is white.
When conducting a traffic stop, officers mark the perceived race of the person they’re pulling over.
Hispanic is an ethnicity, not a race, but many law enforcement agencies, including FHP, use it as an identifying race — it’s one of six options troopers choose from when writing a ticket: “W” (White), “B” (Black), “I” (American Indian), “H” (Hispanic), “A” (Asian) or “O” (Other), according to an agency manual.
In at least seven cases, Palm Beach County court clerks, who process the tickets and initiate them as court cases, adjusted the races of those ticketed or arrested from white to Hispanic in the official court record, WLRN found.
Renata Bozzetto, deputy director of Florida Immigrant Coalition, said the lack of racial or ethnicity data reflects poor training, or an alleged attempt to mask bias.
She said the effects of enforcement are visible, even if the data doesn’t reflect who is being targeted.
“ There are some businesses shutting their doors because customers are not coming in, that cooks are not showing up for work,” she said. “Data masking will really not survive what the reality is telling us.”
Race data and traffic stops
Questions of racial profiling amid 287(g) are not new, but come amid a sustained push by federal authorities and state government to crack down on illegal immigration.
Today, Florida leads the nation in 287(g) agreements, with 341 as of Feb. 17, 2026, according to ICE. It’s largely due to local law enforcement participation.
More than a decade ago, Maricopa County, Ariz. was the laboratory for 287(g) implementation, ProPublica reported. The experiment ended disastrously: the Department of Justice initiated civil rights investigations into discriminatory policing and ICE suspended all deportation task force collaborations with local police.
Those were only reinstated after President Donald Trump started his second term last January.
One key provision to resolve a federal lawsuit in Maricopa County over 287(g) authority overreach was to improve practices to track race and other data in traffic stops.
Race data in stops is used to assess racial bias in police operations.
The Stanford Open Policing Project pulled and analyzed enormous datasets of police traffic stops nationwide, including Florida Highway Patrol.
Examining over 7.2 million stops between 2009 and 2018, the FHP data showed that roughly 56% of those stopped were identified as white, 20% Hispanic/Latino, and 19% were Black.
The stops largely matched Florida population breakdowns, with the exception of Black people — who were stopped at levels higher than the population (which was about 15% in the 2010 census).
Both Hispanics/Latinos and Black people were more likely to be cited or arrested than white people, the data shows.
However, for this kind of analysis to be meaningful, there must be reliable identification of race in traffic stops, according to Parker with the NYU Policing Project.
“ Having and publishing good comprehensive data is so important to help determine is this a systemic problem that's affecting every officer?” Parker said.
FHP bias review
Florida Highway Patrol policy forbids “biased-based profiling” of traffic stops.
“Profiling is illegal, inconsistent with the principles of American policing, and an indefensible public protection strategy. Therefore, profiling cannot, and will not, be tolerated,” former FHP Director Col. Gene Spaulding wrote in a 2016 memorandum on the agency’s website.
In January 2020, FHP’s Office of Inspector General published a “Bias Based Profiling Review” report, which examined whether troopers enforced the law disproportionately based upon a person’s race, gender, ethnicity or other factors.
It compared troopers’ traffic stops to county census data on race and ethnicity.
But the bias report specifically excluded Hispanics and Latinos from its review.
The inspector general could not line up FHP’s data with how the U.S. Census tracked race.
The way the U.S. Census tracks race and ethnicity is familiar to those who have filled out government forms: A person can be either “Hispanic or Latino” or “Not Hispanic or Latino” — irrespective of white, Black, or other races.
Misidentification of Hispanics and Latinos is widespread throughout the American criminal justice system.
“How Latino and Hispanic ethnicity data is stored in local criminal justice systems is inconsistent and inhibits system-wide understanding of racial and ethnic disparities across local jurisdictions,” according to 2023 research from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge.
Controversial immigration arrests
Trooper Petrofsky is a 12-year veteran of Highway Patrol, and his personnel file shows zero complaints and exemplary reviews from supervisors.
Yet as the agency has increasingly discharged troopers to conduct immigration enforcement for 287(g), he became involved in two high-profile arrests.
The first was the arrest of Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio, an 18-year-old American citizen arrested during an FHP traffic stop in May 2025. He and his coworkers were on their way to a landscaping job.
Troopers and Border Patrol agents were recorded speaking candidly, as Laynez-Ambrosio’s phone caught the entire encounter on video.
Laynez-Ambrosio was protesting his treatment as an American citizen. As Petrofsky picks Laynez-Ambrosio up from the ground, the voice of an unidentified officer can be heard telling him: “You got no rights here. You’re illegal, brother. Get up!”
National outrage followed, and prosecutors declined to bring charges against Laynez-Ambrosio.
In a press release last October, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE and Border Patrol, wrote that "several adult male illegal aliens from Guatemala were arrested by U.S. Border Patrol agents responding to a request for assistance from Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) Troopers.
"During the encounter, Kenny Laynez who was part of a group of illegal aliens that resisted arrest during a traffic stop," the statement said.
The second controversial arrest was in North Palm Beach County, when Petrofsky pulled over and arrested a man in January 2026. WLRN was unable to find court records for the arrest.
Obtained video shows Melbi Morales, a U.S. citizen and the cousin of the man being detained, standing next to the car and asking Petrofsky to explain why his cousin was under arrest. The video was captured by a bystander.
Morales told a local news outlet that his cousin was in the U.S. on a valid work permit. Morales declined to be interviewed for this story.
Another trooper arrived, and Petrofsky enlisted him to remove Morales from the scene.
While Petrofsky took the man to a patrol car, the other trooper began to yell at Morales to leave. They argued and the trooper used a taser on Morales before arresting and charging him with violating Florida’s “Halo Law” — mandating bystanders be at least 25 feet away from an ongoing arrest.
The trooper was placed on supervisory review by FHP, a local news outlet reported.
The Guatemalan Maya Center publicized the arrest and video.
The group wrote in an email it serves “as evidence of ongoing heavy handed abusive treatment by FHP (Florida Highway Patrol) to residents of Palm Beach County.”
