Agreements adhere to law but came with no public debate
Florida Atlantic University students and others protested in February the university police department’s partnership with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement via a 287(g) agreement. It mandates that police officers work with ICE to apprehend immigrants who are not in the country legally. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
By John Pacenti
Delray Beach — like municipalities throughout Florida last year — found itself in a vise.
Capitulate to Gov. Ron DeSantis and turn local police officers into de facto federal immigration agents or be labeled an illegal “sanctuary” city and face the consequences.
“Everyone’s in the same position, right?” said State Rep. Rob Long, a Democrat who was still on the Delray Beach City Commission when the issue surfaced for elected leaders last summer. “Cities don’t want retribution either. God knows, we’ve had enough from the state.”
The city already tangled with the governor when it refused to paint over its LGBTQ rainbow intersection — the state stepped in unannounced and did the job itself — and the city even briefly considered joining a lawsuit.
As detailed in The Coastal Star in January, municipalities have seen the state Legislature erode home rule, and it is now looking to get voters to starve the cities, towns and villages of their financial lifeline by eliminating ad valorem taxes for homesteaded properties.
In the end, the city signed the cooperation agreement on Oct. 27 with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to train officers in enforcing immigration laws.
But City Manager Terrence Moore did not put the 287(g) Memorandum of Agreement on the commission’s agenda for a public discussion. Instead, he and Police Chief Darrell Hunter met with elected officials one-on-one.
“If anybody had read it or discussed it, it might have come out that all of a sudden, we no longer have a Police Department. We’re going to have a sub-ICE agency,” said former Commissioner Shirley Johnson.
The agreement was signed before ICE made Minneapolis the center of its enforcement action — before immigration agents shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti and before they detained a 5-year-old boy.
Long said the city was just trying to “fly under the radar” so neither the governor nor ICE would make South Florida its next Minneapolis.
“It’s a conundrum as a commissioner,” Commissioner Tom Markert recalled. “I mean, you just, you try to weigh everything as best you can, and you try to do what’s absolutely best for the citizens.”
Johnson didn’t hold back during public comments at the Jan. 20 commission meeting, calling for dissolution of the commission, describing “the prostitution of our Police Department via the agreement, an MOA, with ICE. Outrageous. Shame. Shame. Shame.”
Residents along the coast who spoke to The Coastal Star declined to go on the record. Residents in Delray Beach known to support ICE also did not respond to efforts to reach them.
For many residents, immigrants are their neighbors. Some are here legally, some have green cards or are working toward them — and some crossed the border without proper papers for work or safety. They are found throughout the barrier island as yard workers, in the trades, as nannies, as housekeepers.
Not just Delray
Delray Beach is not alone. Boca Raton, Gulf Stream, Ocean Ridge and Highland Beach also did not bring the 287(g) agreements up in a public forum. Gulf Stream, with a force of 13, has four officers trained to assist ICE, Police Chief Richard Jones said.
In Boca Raton, resident Christina Escalante asked the City Council at an Oct. 27 workshop why the 287(g) agreement was not posted on any city or Police Department website. She wanted to know if local officers — like ICE agents — would obscure their identities and make language-based stops and target domestic workers’ identification.
About 100 Florida Atlantic University students in Boca Raton staged a protest on Feb. 25 about FAU’s signing a 287(g) agreement for campus police to be trained to be ICE agents.
Organizers of the protest also pointed out that FAU President Adam Hasner is a former executive for the private prison GEO Group, which is profiting mightily from the detention of immigrants. GEO pulled in $254.3 million — a net increase of 700% — as President Donald Trump’s government has amassed a network of detention centers, buying former big-box stores.
Student protests in 2012 stopped the FAU football stadium from being named after GEO Group.
Some of the concerns regarding the 287(g) agreements stem from the way DeSantis has used the Florida Highway Patrol, which has been documented as detaining U.S. citizens after pulling them over because they looked Hispanic.
“The Florida Highway Patrol has basically been turned into a show me your papers patrol,” Thomas Kennedy, a consultant with the Florida Immigration Coalition, posted Feb. 18 on X.
The Republican governor has also been denounced by Amnesty International for building the Alligator Alcatraz immigration facility west of Miami, saying detainees face human rights violations.
Impact in Delray
Back in Delray Beach, the issue bubbled up at the Beach Property Owners Association commission candidate forum between Andrea Keiser and Judy Mollica. “Would you be supportive of ICE here to support getting rid of the criminal, illegal or not?” asked a resident attending, demanding a yes or no answer.
Many in the audience shouted the questioner down, saying the issue wasn’t relevant. All the candidates for the open seat — including Delores Rangel, who wasn’t at the BPOA forum — have said the agreement should have been a public matter. Mollica, though, added, “Because, much like the (Pride) crosswalk thing, they didn’t give us a choice.”
Delray Beach is also home to 15,000 Haitians — 20% of the city’s population. A federal judge on Feb. 2 blocked Trump’s efforts to strip Haitians with temporary protected status of that status even as their homeland remains in what the United Nations has called a “deepening security, humanitarian, and governance crisis.”
A federal immigration enforcement action against Haitians could put ICE agents on the streets of Delray Beach, Johnson said.
“The things that happen in Minneapolis could happen in any USA town,” Johnson said. “You can’t send people back to that country. It is in turmoil — turmoil. They’re killing people as they step off the plane.”
When asked, Commissioner Juli Casale referenced the 2024 campaign when she, Mayor Tom Carney and Markert campaigned on ending back-room deals.
“We were elected on a firm commitment to transparency and public accountability,” she said. “While Mr. Moore acted within his administrative authority to resolve this matter, in retrospect, an issue of this significance should have been presented for public discussion.”
Casale said she requested a copy of the Memorandum of Agreement from Moore for a meeting on Sept. 24. Moore did not give her a copy of the 287(g) but insisted that the city would not incur liability and cost for the local police officers who were trained to become ICE agents.
Casale then made a public records request for the MOA. “Upon reading the MOA, I disagreed with Mr. Moore’s assessment as to liability and cost,” she said.
The commissioner also contacted City Attorney Lynn Gelin to request that the document be amended to clearly state that there would be no costs or liability — which she called her bigger concern — to the residents of Delray Beach.
‘It’s a state law’
Neither Moore nor Chief Hunter would comment on the ICE agreement. The Coastal Star, through a public records request, received 101 pages of emails and documentation.
Then Police Chief Russ Mager, in a March 3, 2025, email to then Assistant Chief Hunter, discussed the new MOA. “We need to designate 10% of the agency for ICE training,” he states. There are around 160 sworn police officers in the department, meaning that 16 would be trained on immigration enforcement.
In a 10-point summary of DeSantis’ proposal, Mager says by Jan. 1, 2026, any law enforcement agency with 25 or more sworn law enforcement officers must enter into a written agreement with ICE and participate in “every program model offered.”
Carney told The Coastal Star he had no appetite to revisit the 287(g) agreement when asked about it.
“It’s a state law. You obviously didn’t watch the governor the other day,” the mayor said. “The governor essentially said that if people are going to fight him on it, he’s going to remove them” from office.
State Attorney General James Uthmeier has said that not signing the agreement violates state law by creating an illegal “sanctuary policy” and impeding enforcement.
South Miami took the DeSantis administration to court, citing liability and cost concerns. A judge dismissed the lawsuit in March 2025, saying the litigation was premature since the city had yet to incur any real damages.
South Miami leaders remain in office and have not faced punishment from the state.
Nearby Key Biscayne, a wealthy community with a lot of immigrants, has also not signed the agreement after opposition from residents and has faced no repercussions.
Delray Beach resident Ken MacNamee, a retired CPA, started asking questions in December after he said he was “blindsided” when he learned of the MOA.
MacNamee wrote to commissioners on Dec. 8, saying municipalities had every right to object to or modify the agreement according to the MOA itself: “It is convoluted, lacking, and very poorly constructed. It protects ICE but not the City. I find it tantamount to conscripting the Delray Beach Police Dept. to do ICE’s job.”
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