CEDAR KEY, Fla. — Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) officers are expressing concerns about their preparedness to make immigration arrests, according to body camera footage WPTV obtained.
The footage from August shows a FWC officer conducting a routine fishing inspection, then detaining five undocumented migrants. It’s one of the first times we’ve seen state law enforcement perform immigration enforcement on camera, a new part of their job after Gov. Ron DeSantis required state agencies to enter into agreements with the Department of Homeland Security earlier this year.
WATCH: Officer says they've been instructed to check people who don't 'appear to be a citizen'
Body camera footage shows officers struggling to communicate with the people they are investigating, talking with an ICE agent over a cell phone while questioning the suspected undocumented migrants and then taking five people to a jail.
The jail refused to take the suspected undocumented migrants because they couldn’t house them with general population inmates.
The situation at the county jail led an officer to compare their ability to perform the arrests to a baby animal trying to walk for the first time.
“Looking like a newborn giraffe with wobbly legs trying to make his way around,” said the FWC officer about his performance detaining five people.
Federal law only allowed agencies, like ICE and Border Patrol, to enforce federal immigration laws. However, local law enforcement officers can get deputized to carry out similar functions if they are trained after a 287(g) agreement is signed.
These three officers, according to body camera footage WPTV obtained, said their training was similar to a one-hour online class while laughing with a deputy.
An inspector general report from March 2010, when 287(g) agreements were more common, said there was no national requirement for training before an officer is deputized to perform immigration enforcement. The report said trainings on civil rights aspects can range from four hours to 24 hours.
State
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Thomas Kennedy, a policy analyst for a nonprofit focused on fair treatment for immigrants, reviewed the footage and expressed concerns about the lack of training leading to racial profiling. He said this can lead to mistakes and potential lawsuits.
“This is the kind of stuff that leads to law enforcement making mistakes," Kennedy said. "You're going to start seeing more and more of these civil rights lawsuits against the municipal and law enforcement entities and they cost the taxpayers a lot of money.”
He specifically pointed out a comment from one of the officers, who said he was directed to perform immigration checks based on somebody’s appearance.
“We’ve been directed to check with immigration on anyone that just gives us a passport and doesn’t appear to be a citizen,” said the officer to a suspected undocumented migrant's sister on the phone while informing her about her brother’s detainment. “So that’s kind of what we did.”
The phone call came after the officers made a deal that if the five migrants, who either had passports from El Salvador or Guatemala, cooperated with law enforcement they would get to make one phone call home.
A spokesperson for FWC said more than 800 officers are deputized to enforce immigration laws. But the agency didn’t comment specifically about the video. Rather, it sent WPTV a general statement about the program’s ability to protect communities.
State
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“FWC officers play a crucial role in assisting with identifying and processing individuals who are in the country unlawfully, thereby significantly strengthening public safety and enhancing cooperation between local and federal agencies,” said Communication Director Shannon Knowles. “We remain steadfast in our commitment to working closely with our partner agencies, reinforcing our collective efforts to protect our communities and uphold the rule of law.”
According to the State Board of Immigration Enforcement, FWC has encountered around 180 undocumented migrants over the last 90 days.
The footage shows the department’s officers didn’t detain a minor, who it also found fishing off a bridge in Florida’s Big Bend. Instead, the officers found somebody who spoke Spanish to call the boy’s father to pick him up. The child was released to his father, however the man originally refused to exit the car because he was scared he would get deported as well. Both were allowed to leave the scene without being detained.
Footage also shows one of the officers saying he felt thankful another man showed up to help translate between the officers and the undocumented migrants. The officers gave the man various objects “to hold” from the people they detained until their return, however they said they didn’t know where they would be going or when the could come back.
That interaction, according to the body camera footage, happened after FWC officers checked his immigration status as well. He was an American citizen with a Florida driver’s license.
