Federal immigration authorities will no longer be able to detain people who aren’t facing criminal charges at the Orange County Jail under a new agreement formalized by county leaders Tuesday.
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County commissioners unanimously decided to carve ICE out of its deal with the feds and enter into a new agreement, which they hope will reduce the strain of staffing, resources and finances at the jail.
Under the new Basic Ordering Agreement, or BOA, Orange County will receive less money in reimbursement – $50 per detainee, with as much as $150 per detainee is available under a state grant – but county leaders contend it will also lead to fewer people held, driving costs down.
The BOA agreement also states ICE may only place a detainer on somebody already booked on criminal charges. Orange must release a person within 48 hours of their criminal charge being settled.
Florida law requires all counties to have either an BOA or an Intergovernmental Service Agreement, or IGSA, with ICE at all times, and the county is choosing essentially a hybrid option.
Under the previous IGSA agreement with ICE, the feds could hold somebody for up to 72 hours after their charges are settled, though county attorneys have also said they wouldn’t release somebody after that point without a court order.
The IGSA will still remain in place for most federal law enforcement agencies who frequently make arrests, such as the FBI, DEA or U.S. Postal Service, allowing them to house inmates at the jail.
It will also still apply to those facing federal charges with court hearings at the federal courthouse in Downtown Orlando, ranging from money laundering to possession of child pornography to drug trafficking and murder.
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The county will receive a higher reimbursement for those inmates, with the U.S. Marshals Service agreeing to pay $125 per day. While that’s less than what the county says it costs to hold them — roughly $180 total — it’s an improvement on the prior rate of $88 per day.
That arrangement has been in place since the 1980s, but was was amended to include ICE in 2011.
Federal judges in Orlando have ordered the immediate release of multiple immigrants from the Orange County Jail this year, with one judge questioning ICE’s practice of picking up detainees from the jail, busing them to another facility where they are kept briefly and later returning them to the jail.
Those rebooking efforts — first revealed by the Orlando Sentinel — get around the rule under the previous agreement with the county that a detainee with no criminal charges must be removed from the jail by ICE after 72 hours or be released.
It’s unclear where ICE will detain immigrants without criminal charges it seeks to deport moving forward. The agency could use its existing — and growing — detention space around the country, or other jails with an IGSA. ICE didn’t immediately respond to emailed questions.
Ericka Gomez-Tejeda, a spokesperson for the Immigrants Are Welcome Here coalition that pushed the county for a year to alter its agreement with ICA, thanked commissioners at their meeting Tuesday.
“Today is a big day,” she said. “We’re finally getting ICE out of the IGSA, and we want to express our deep gratitude for listening and being courageous.”
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