Federal and state Democratic lawmakers gathered in West Palm Beach to hear from immigrant advocates, lawyers and pastors about aggressive immigration enforcement in Palm Beach County.
On Friday morning, U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel, D-Palm Beach County, sat alongside U.S. Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Massachusetts, the Democratic minority whip and No. 2-ranking member in the Democratic caucus.
The two were in South Florida as their colleagues in the U.S. Senate debated a budget bill with more guardrails for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
DHS and ICE have faced growing scrutiny after immigration agents killed two protestors in Minneapolis in recent weeks. Frankel voted against increased funding for DHS and ICE in a measure that passed last month.
At the roundtable event at West Palm Beach City Hall, they heard from local activists and immigration groups, who told the leaders in no uncertain terms about what they have been facing for close to a year.
Palm Beach County is "the belly of the beast" for immigration action, according to Renata Bozzetto, deputy director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition. That's largely due to local and state law enforcement working with ICE to arrest immigrants, she said.
"It is that collaboration with the police that is harming our communities, and it's as invisible and insidious as domestic violence," Bozzetto said.
Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida legislators have pressured law enforcement agencies big and small to sign onto 287(g) agreements, which are local partnerships with ICE.
"We have the highest amount of detentions of any county in the entire state of Florida, and I believe that Florida probably has some of the highest detentions in the country," said Lindsay McElroy of the Guatemalan-Maya Center, a social services organization in Lake Worth Beach.
McElroy specifically called out the Florida Highway Patrol and Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office.
" Nobody's against having a lawful way to come in and leave the country. We want that. But it doesn't have to be cruel. We should have due process. And we should have humanity," Frankel said on Friday.
State Sen. Lori Berman, the Democratic minority leader whose district includes Palm Beach County, said more citizens need to come to Tallahassee to tell legislators about the effects immigration enforcement is having on them.
" I'm sorry to hear about Palm Beach County being the belly of the beast," Berman said. "It's really disturbing to me as a resident and a legislator from this area."
Berman said Democratic bills to require data collection on immigration enforcement in the state have received little traction in Florida's Republican-supermajority Legislature.
Anxiety over TPS deadline
Pastors in attendance said a large issue looming over the heads of their congregants was the ending of Temporary Protected Status for Haitians, which DHS Secretary Kristi Noem set for Tuesday.
South Florida is home to hundreds of thousands of foreign-born Haitians and those with Haitian families, who will soon lose legal status to be in the United States.
The Trump administration announced in late November it was ending TPS for Haitians — despite reports from organizations like the United Nations that say conditions inside Haiti are as unsafe as they've ever been.
TPS was created by Congress and is renewable every 18 months at executive discretion. It allows migrants from countries torn by disasters or political violence to remain in the U.S., protected from deportation, until it is deemed safe for them to go back.
Bozzetto, with Florida Immigrant Coalition, urged Frankel to sign on to a discharge petition for extending TPS for Haiti.
The petition, introduced by U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Massachusetts, requires 218 signatures to advance and would compel DHS to extend TPS for Haitians for another three years.
"That is our ask for you, congresswoman Lois Frankel, to support that discharge petition," Bozzetto said, "but also to work your political power and your political capital to urge the community, your peers, as well as those across the aisle to defend our TPS recipients."
She said the only Florida U.S. House member to sign it was Rep. Maxwell Frost of Orlando.
Frankel was seen taking notes and nodding at her request. As of Saturday, Frankel has not signed the petition.
The ending of TPS combined with increased immigration action has kept people home from church and community, faith leaders told the gathered officials.
" We're hearing this all across Palm Beach County. Church is supposed to be the one place where we can come together and unite together, sing together, pray together, but we're having families who are afraid to assemble in our churches because of fear," said Pastor Richard Davis, of Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church.
" If you can't attend churches and feel safe, you can't go to school and feel safe because of fear," Davis said, "Where can one attend?"
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