When a Manatee County Sheriff’s deputy pulled over Jean Gustave in September, the 45-year-old Haitian man had temporary protected status, offering him legal protection from detention and deportation.
An investigation by Matthew Blackwell, the deputy who pulled him over for an alleged tag violation, later found no probable cause. Gustave was not charged or arrested that night.
But authorities kept him on the side of the road in Bradenton as they snapped his photo, took down his personal information and uploaded it to a database run by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Across Florida, law enforcement officers have been asked to gather names, photographs, addresses and other personal information about people they suspect may be in the country without authorization and upload them to a centralized surveillance database during the course of their routine job duties.
The database debuted in August 2025 as Florida created the State Board of Immigration Enforcement and expanded the role of state and local police in immigration enforcement. FDLE developed the reporting system for local agencies to log their “suspected unauthorized alien encounters” into the database, which has since swelled to more than 30,000 entries.
A review of the surveillance database shows officers routinely submitted the names of individuals for whom they could not confirm even basic citizenship details — as well as the names of hundreds of minors.
Because officers are encouraged to report people they merely suspect may be undocumented, attorneys and immigration experts said the system risks sweeping in people with legal status.
The vast majority also had no known criminal background.
A 36-year-old man from Guatemala who worked for a lawn care service.
A 35-year-old construction worker from Mexico.
And a 52-year-old grandmother from Nicaragua who worked for a painting company.
Deputies noted no prior convictions associated with these individuals, who represent just a few examples of the entries in the database.
Florida officials have revealed only fragments of the database publicly and did not return reporters’ questions about how the information is used, how long it is retained and with whom it is shared.
But using web-scraping techniques, reporters were able to pull far more from the state’s own online dashboard than officials had disclosed — providing the most detailed look yet at the reach of Florida’s expanding immigration surveillance system.
Over the course of 10 weeks, Suncoast Searchlight, Florida Trident and WGCU collected and reviewed the data from Florida’s State Board of Immigration Enforcement dashboard, analyzed more than 10,000 consecutive reports from a four-and-a-half month period of individual encounters, observed a traffic stop-turned-immigration investigation, spent days on the ground in the most affected communities, obtained and reviewed public records on local immigration enforcement, and interviewed civil rights attorneys and people swept into the system.
Among the findings:
- Florida doesn’t require agencies to vet the data before officers submit it. And agencies have obtained millions of dollars in immigration enforcement grants for broader surveillance technologies like Flock cameras as part of an initiative tied to the reporting effort.
- The dragnet is seemingly indiscriminate. Local and federal authorities have promised their immigration enforcement targets “the worst of the worst.” But in Florida, the vast majority of people who officers encountered and entered into the database were not serious criminals. More than 80% had no known criminal record at all.
- The encounters have targeted working-age Latino men. Florida deportations and detentions have pulled breadwinners away from families — some of whom now struggle to pay for rent, medical bills and even food. Nine out of 10 people listed in the database are men. In many cases, authorities didn’t even verify suspects’ citizenship status with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement before adding their names to the list.
- Only officers trained by the federal government are supposed to conduct immigration enforcement. But records show police agencies have allowed untrained officers to hold people on the side of the road for ICE, a practice attorneys said is illegal.
“The idea that a [local] law enforcement officer could inquire into somebody's immigration status and then land on some sort of probable cause or reasonable suspicion that the person's removable from the country is really outlandish,” said Paul Chavez, a civil rights attorney and director of litigation for Americans for Immigrant Justice.
Florida’s immigration enforcement dashboard only offers a glimpse at overall enforcement: it does not include, for example, operations conducted by ICE in the state without local agencies’ involvement. It does not show whether individuals were ultimately deported. And police do not always submit information quickly — like Florida Highway Patrol, which led the state in immigration encounters before June 30, but has not updated its data since.
What the database offers is a glimpse into Florida’s massive street-level immigration enforcement push — and who it has targeted.
In response to an inquiry about the database, ICE directed reporters to FDLE, which also did not return requests for an interview or answer emailed questions about the database.
Months after his encounter with Manatee County sheriff’s deputies, Gustave’s cell phone was disconnected. A reporter went looking for him at the Bradenton mobile home park where records indicated he lived — a sprawling gravel lot with rows of trailers packed tightly together. No one answered the door.
A neighbor pulled up in his car, and when asked for Gustave’s whereabouts, he said Gustave wasn’t there anymore.
He had been deported.
How an immigration surveillance database was spawned
One by one, law enforcement officials from across Florida logged into a video conference call on a Thursday afternoon in late August 2025. Nearly 100 were there by the time Melissa Bujeda, an FDLE official coordinating some of the state’s immigration work, began explaining the new task Florida wanted them to take on.
It might be “cumbersome,” she warned.
In addition to their regular workload, she told the members of the Florida Police Chiefs Association that all law enforcement agencies — from campus police to the state Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission — would be required to closely document their immigration enforcement efforts under a Florida law that passed early last year.
Every time an officer encountered an individual they simply suspected of lacking legal status in the United States, they would be required to photograph that person and take down key information about them, including their home address, vehicle make and model, phone number and employer.
At the time of Bujeda’s presentation, a recording of which reporters obtained, law enforcement officers had already reported more than 400 encounters since the database soft launched earlier that month — but FDLE was planning to scale up by getting agencies across the state to submit reports, a prerequisite for them to receive special grant dollars for immigration enforcement.
Bujeda emphasized that the state wanted to make submissions as easy as possible for local officers.
With the click of a button, she said, entries are "immediately sent into our database” — with no supervisory review required.
The submission form states an officer needs only “reasonable suspicion” that someone might be in the country without authorization to place their name, photograph and personal details into the state database without a second set of eyes verifying the information or the basis for including them.
Even when agencies have no encounters, they must submit monthly reports.
“You don’t want goose eggs,” said Pinellas Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, who sits on the State Immigration Board, at another statewide presentation to law enforcement agencies across Florida in September 2025. “You don’t want to be that agency that’s dead for months [with] zeros as far as immigration investigations.”
He added that any official who violated the new statute “is subject to action by the governor, including potential suspension from office.”
The reporting system is an extension of Florida’s wide-reaching partnerships between local law enforcement agencies and ICE under ICE’s 287(g) program. Named for a section of federal immigration law, the program allows state and local law enforcement agencies to perform limited immigration functions, like holding people in local jails for ICE. The agency’s “task force” model allows local law officials who have completed federal training to conduct immigration enforcement in the streets.
Under Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida has embraced the program more aggressively than perhaps any other state in the country, with more than 9,000 “designated immigration officers” credentialed by ICE across the Sunshine State.
But records show the reach of the state’s immigration crackdown extends beyond those federally trained officers — through policies allowing even untrained officers to hold individuals on behalf of ICE and penalties for agencies that do not comply.
In Pinellas County, for example, Gualtieri issued a memo to his deputies in February 2025 stating that if any officer encounters a person during a traffic stop matching an individual with an ICE warrant, they can “request an ICE officer come to the scene to arrest the individual” and wait up to an hour for federal agents to arrive.
Gualtieri forwarded the memo — first reported by Creative Loafing Tampa Bay — to 10 chiefs of police in Pinellas County.
An updated policy issued by Gualtieri’s office seven months later clarifies that ICE or a trained local officer must respond “immediately” when a non-credentialed officer calls.
When reached by a reporter, Gualtieri declined to answer specific questions about the practice.
Similar guidance shared with police across the state by the Florida Police Chiefs Association states that non-immigration officers can hold people they determine have an ICE warrant for a period of time “determined by their respective agency.”
Attorneys and experts in policing told reporters it is illegal for non-federalized officers to extend a traffic stop to hold people for ICE.
“It’s not legal because immigration enforcement is fully within the realm of the federal government,” said Chavez, of Americans for Immigrant Justice.
A non-credentialed officer “holding somebody for immigration purposes is wholly unlawful,” he said. “You can’t pull somebody over and then hold them there past the time they would have otherwise been released.”
‘Worst of the Worst’
On Oct. 20, former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem stood in front of a table in a federal field office in Bradenton piled with guns and bags of white powder. Behind the display stood two photos of men purportedly arrested for homicide and incest.
“I want to speak directly to the American people today, and remind them and recall the fact that we are focused on the worst of the worst,” Noem said. “We’re not going to let individuals terrorize our streets anymore, and we’re not going to let them make victims of families that live in this country.”
But a review of Florida’s immigration enforcement dashboard contradicts those claims.
In the nearly five months of data reporters reviewed, 8 in 10 of local police encounters targeted individuals with no known criminal record.
Even some Florida officials have expressed worry about the impact of immigration arrests on law-abiding community members.
People who are “living the American dream and are being very productive and doing good in this country” should have a clear pathway to legal status, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said during a meeting of the State Immigration Enforcement Council earlier this year.
Federal agents’ workplace raids and neighborhood sweeps, some members of the council said, could cast too wide a net.
Most people who appear in the Florida database share two things in common: They are of working age. And the vast majority — roughly 90% — are men.
The detention and deportation of working men has become so widespread in Lee County that local volunteers have coalesced specifically around the issue.
Sigfredo Hernandez, a local retiree, has helped mobilize volunteers in Bonita Springs to support women whose partners have been detained or deported — a group he refers to as “ICE widows.” The abrupt loss of a working family member’s income has left many struggling to find the housing — or even food — their families need to survive.
“If they take your breadwinner away,” Hernandez said, “you go from [some] amount of income to zero in a hurry.”
Nancy, a mother of two, moved into a one-bedroom trailer with her children after her husband was detained and deported to Guatemala. She asked reporters to withhold her last name for fear of being targeted herself.
“With this check, I’ll buy diapers and food,” said Nancy, in Spanish. She paused and swung her freezer door open, which was empty, save for two pieces of frozen chicken. “We don’t have anything.”
The grassroots group has begun distributing checks directly to the women through an informal program that Hernandez said has drawn so much interest the volunteers have had to consider who to prioritize first.
“We have to decide how we’re going to ration the money,” Hernandez said. “Some families have greater needs than others, like if they have babies and the mother cannot work.”
Experts raise racial profiling concerns
Civil rights advocates warn Florida’s immigration operations have opened the door to abuse by allowing officers to upload the information of people they merely suspect of lacking legal status.
Federal authorities previously abandoned the task force model nationwide in 2012 amid allegations of widespread racial profiling — most notably in Maricopa County, Arizona, where former Sheriff Joe Arpaio faced a high-profile lawsuit that found his office had profiled Latinos and violated their Fourth Amendment protections against warrantless search and seizure.
In a 2013 ruling, a federal judge found that Arpaio’s office had used “traffic stops as a pretext,” patrolling Latino neighborhoods to catch people officers thought might lack legal status.
Implementing court-mandated reforms in the wake of that litigation has cost Maricopa County more than $300 million. Observers there say that the widespread resurrection of the task force model under Trump’s second term could prove a liability for local law enforcement agencies across the country that participate.
Amy Godshall, an immigrants’ rights attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, said she believes that is already happening in Florida.
A review of the database shows police in Florida are frequently unable to confirm basic details about the individuals they report.
In nearly 330 cases in the last year, police officers indicated that they did not know the country of origin of individuals whose names were uploaded, and in more than 40% of cases reviewed by reporters, officers said they had not confirmed suspects’ citizenship with ICE.
Through a legal observer program, Godshall said the ACLU has received dozens of allegations of profiling by police and sheriffs’ deputies using the 287(g) task force model.
“People are pulled over for pretextual traffic stop reasons, and then the officers ask them immigration questions and call ICE and say, ‘Hey, ICE, do you want this person?’” said Godshall. In some cases, people may be detained on the side of the road for more than an hour while police officers wait for federal agents to get involved.
“People’s rights are being violated in a variety of ways throughout the enactment of these 287(g) agreements,” she said.
DHS did not respond to questions about how the agency safeguards against racial profiling in its 287(g) task force program.
Godshall blamed, in part, the level of training that local officers receive when they become certified to conduct immigration enforcement under the task force model. Compared to federal officers, local police have more limited legal knowledge and experience — and under Trump’s second administration, the Department of Homeland Security has fast-tracked training for local officers.
The task force model “historically required extensive in-person training in Charleston, S.C.,” according to a presentation Gualtieri prepared for Florida’s State Immigration Enforcement Council. Now, it is available through a 40-hour online program.
More money, more surveillance
Among the more than 23 million people who live in Florida, census data suggest that undocumented immigrants make up about 5% or less.
But efforts to crack down on people without legal status in the Sunshine State could have broader-reaching consequences as agencies obtain millions of dollars in immigration grant funding for surveillance technologies like Flock cameras, eyeball scanners and artificial intelligence tools.
During the most recent round of state funding for immigration enforcement in June, 25 local agencies received money to purchase Peregrine software, an AI-driven data analysis tool modeled after the controversial surveillance company Palantir. In its application for state funding, Marion County officials wrote that Peregrine would allow law enforcement officers to conduct “rapid searches across databases to build profiles on individuals by accessing personal data through public and private sources.”
Peregrine has said it maintains strict security protocols to protect the data agencies collect, but civil liberties advocates warn the technology could erode individuals’ privacy.
The city of Pensacola got funding to train officers on Cellebrite, a company that specializes in extracting data from devices like cell phones. Other agencies received funding for iris scanners, automated license plate readers and mobile surveillance towers.
Lee County, which has reported more encounters than any other local agency, has received more funding, too — netting more than $10 million in state grants.
Lauren Bonds, the executive director of the nonprofit National Police Accountability Project, said that even individuals who have legal status — or aren’t immigrants at all — should pay attention to Florida’s surveillance efforts, including the FDLE database.
“It’s hard,” Bonds said, “with any of these types of surveillance … to really keep it exclusive to immigrants and people who are non-citizens, because it's just too broad.”
“This kind of flagrant targeting and categorizing of people,” she added, referring to the Florida database. “It’s not something I would have expected to see in America.”
This story was collaboratively reported and produced by Suncoast Searchlight, Florida Trident and WGCU, nonprofit newsrooms serving communities across Florida.
