Orange County has reversed its practice of concealing the names of the jail inmates it holds on immigration detainers, which sparked outraged protests, and has started to prominently identify them.
On the jail’s website, a yellow banner with the words “Immigration Hold” appears alongside a detainee’s mugshot.
Although other jails have displayed similar immigration detainers, the county has previously maintained that it was compelled by its arrangement with federal officials to keep the names of the detainees secret.
However, relatives expressed dissatisfaction about the disappearance of their loved ones into the immigration detention system.
In late June, prison personnel were ordered to change their direction by Mayor Jerry Demings.
Demings said in a statement that ICE immigrant detainees will be included to this database going forward. This, in my opinion, will help inmates’ relatives find their loved ones. The jail’s website now has pertinent information for the general public.
Although the value may be temporary, such information is helpful to lawyers and relatives who are looking for prisoners. Federal immigration inmates are frequently moved quickly to facilities in Texas, New Mexico, Miami, or the new Alligator Alcatraz in the Everglades.
It can be difficult to locate them when they are sent to an ICE facility.
Felipe Sousa Lazaballet, executive director of the Hope Community Center in Apopka, stated, “It’s a really good first step and we’re really grateful to the elected officials who are finally listening to us.” Living in a community where people vanish is totally unacceptable.
The county jail is one of just a few establishments in the state that keeps federal inmates under Orange County’s Intergovernmental Service Agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. At a meeting next week, county commissioners are anticipated to go over the deal in more detail.
This implies that individuals who are detained on immigration-related offenses outside of Orange County’s boundaries—in certain situations, up to 100 miles away—are booked and held in the jail until they are able to be moved to an ICE facility.
That arrangement has also drawn criticism, partly because the county only receives $88 for each day an inmate is detained, whereas detaining an individual costs roughly $145.
According to Sousa Lazaballet, he thinks the county ought to completely discontinue the IGSA arrangement.
In the past, an inmate’s name would never show up on the jail’s roster if they were booked in with an immigration detainer but no local charges.
However, a person would be listed on the jail’s website until the local matter was resolved if they were booked on a criminal charge or even a traffic ticket with such a detainer. Even though they frequently remain in the same jail, they would then be taken from the roster and become a federal inmate.
Commissioner Kelly Martinez Semrad, who had been advocating for the move, expressed gratitude that the data is now more transparent so that families can locate their loved ones in the Orange County Jail.
When they are sent from the Orange County Jail to another institution and then returned to the local jail, she claimed that some inmates are still getting lost in the system.
We’re still losing folks there, she added. Families feel as though they are losing loved ones.
