Demings gives feds more time to renegotiate reimbursement for ICE detention costs

Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings Credit: via Orange County Mayor Jerry L. Demings/Facebook

Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings on Friday extended the county’s deadline for federal officials to negotiate a higher reimbursement rate for immigrant detention costs, as county officials warn the local jail — serving as a temporary holding center for federal inmates — is stretched thin and overburdened.

Mayor Demings, a former sheriff and Democratic candidate for Florida governor, wrote a letter to the U.S. Marshall Service on Feb. 13, threatening to potentially cancel the county’s agreement to aid U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement next month if the agency failed to negotiate a higher reimbursement rate for ICE detention costs to the county.

Currently, it costs the county about $180 per day to house a person detained by ICE in the Orange County Jail, but the federal government is only reimbursing the county $88 per person. This, in effect, leaves local taxpayers on the hook for the rest.

County leaders initially contacted the U.S. Marshals Service to renegotiate this reimbursement cost in August. As of December, Demings noted the reimbursement gap had already left the county on the hook for over $300,000 in federal detention costs. “To date, supporting federal and state immigration mandates has cost our county’s taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars, which is a hefty burden for any local government to pay,” he wrote in a letter to USMS on Dec. 22.

According to county public safety director Danny Banks, however, the feds have finally taken notice of the county’s plea, after largely leaving them on “read” for months.

Banks sent a memo to county leaders Friday, informing them that the U.S. Marshals Service “provided a prompt response” to Demings’ letter sent earlier this month, but has asked for an extension to the mayor’s deadline for further negotiations. According to Banks, the USMS “has indicated a willingness” to negotiate reimbursement, and wants until March 31 to do so. The initial deadline that Demings set was March 13.

The memo adds that Demings “has endorsed their [USMS’s] request,” giving federal officials an extra 18 days to negotiate a deal with the county.

Demings’ Feb. 13 letter hadn’t threatened to immediately cancel the county’s agreement with USMS, but it did state that the county would pursue “considering future options available to us,” including to terminate their agreement offering aid to ICE, if the March 13 deadline for renegotiated reimbursement wasn’t met.

Under the county’s current agreement, known as an intergovernmental service agreement, the Orange County Jail can hold people detained by ICE on federal immigration charges for up to 72 hours before they must be taken elsewhere. In practice, county officials have admitted that federal agents have shuffled the same people in and out of the jail after the 72-hour mark in an effort to essentially reset the clock — a practice Demings has told federal officials they would no longer allow, come March 1.

According to the Orlando Sentinel, the jail last month was holding 185 people each day on average who were detained by ICE without any actual criminal charges. Of those, more than 60 percent had been held in the jail longer than the 72 hours required under the county’s IGSA.

Immigrants rights advocates have urged county leaders to go further and file a lawsuit to seek clarification on what aid they are legally obligated to provide ICE under state and federal law. Under state law, local governments in Florida are required to demonstrate “best efforts” to support the enforcement of federal immigration law, but that term “best efforts” isn’t clearly defined.

“This is much more than political calculations. These are human lives,” said Audubon Park Covenant Church Pastor Sarah Robinson, speaking to county commissioners during a board meeting earlier this month.

Calls to action from local advocates have only sharpened following the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two U.S. citizens fatally shot by federal immigration enforcement agents during the Trump administration’s “Operation Metro Surge” in Minneapolis in January. ICE is also reportedly eyeing an industrial warehouse in Orlando as a potential site for a new immigrant detention center, as part of a $38 billion plan by the Trump administration to transform two dozen warehouses nationwide into detention facilities.

County Commissioner Nicole Wilson, representing District 1, initiated an effort to block the development of any non-municipal detention facility, at least temporarily. Under the U.S. Constitution and state law, however, doing so can be tricky and may not hold up in court. As an alternative, county leaders are considering drafting up a symbolic resolution expressing their concerns about the prospect.

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