Inmate names to remain public under ICE agreement with Miami-Dade jails, admin says
A proposed update to Miami-Dade County's detention agreement with ICE won't cause any changes with how family members can find relatives in local jails or give the federal immigration agency extra authority within the county's Corrections system, a top deputy to Mayor Daniella Levine Cava pledged Monday.
James Reyes, chief of public safety under Levine Cava, said the updated agreement does not give Immigration and Customs Enforcement additional powers in Miami-Dade jails, where the county already has a state-mandated cooperation agreement with ICE to hold inmates for two extra working days if they're booked on local charges while also being sought for deportation.
The agreement, proposed by Levine Cava, is scheduled for a final vote before the County Commission on June 26.
Immigration advocates have expressed concerns that the proposed update to that agreement would give ICE the ability to remove some inmates' names from the Miami-Dade online portal, where anyone can search for someone to see if they're being held. Reyes said all inmate names will remain in that public database, even those being held for ICE.
'Nothing is going to change,' said Reyes, who was the county's Corrections director before Levine Cava promoted him to his current position, overseeing the jails and the Fire Rescue Department. 'If somebody is in our custody — we have a public-facing site that's searchable where you can see who is in our custody. That's going to stay the same. As long as they are in our custody, they will appear in that searchable database.'
Immigration advocacy groups had hoped to block approval of the agreement at a Monday morning committee meeting by the County Commission. That meeting of the Policy Council was canceled when not enough commissioners showed up to meet the quorum requirements. While commissioners didn't show, multiple local residents did attend to object to the ICE deal that is recommended by Levine Cava but requires a commission vote.
'It's immoral,' said Silvia Muñoz, a Miami volunteer for the Cuban American Women Supporting Democracy advocacy group. 'It's a human-rights issue.'
Miami-Dade already had a fierce fight over turning over county inmates to ICE when they're sought for deportation. That was in 2017 during the initial weeks of the first Trump administration, when Miami-Dade under then-Mayor Carlos Gimenez agreed to honor detention requests from federal immigration agents.
The county had been declining to delay releasing inmates at ICE's request before Trump took office unless the federal government agreed to cover the extra jail costs. When Trump promised a crackdown on 'sanctuary' jurisdictions, Gimenez, now a Republican member of Congress, agreed to drop the reimbursement requirement, and commissioners voted to endorse the new policy later that year.
Levine Cava is a Democrat who voted against the Gimenez ICE policy when she was a county commissioner in 2017. She hasn't sought to change it since becoming mayor in 2020. Reyes, a former Democratic candidate for county sheriff, said the proposed update to the existing ICE agreement would let Miami-Dade collect $50 from Washington for every inmate it holds for ICE.
'The only thing that changes for us is currently we don't get reimbursed,' he said.
It costs about $523 million a year to run Miami-Dade's jails, where the average daily population is 4,700 inmates, according to budget documents. That translates to a daily cost of about $305 per inmate.
Advocacy groups pointed to language in the proposed 'Basic Ordering Agreement' with ICE that governs public records in the county's Corrections Department. The agreement states that information generated under the arrangement becomes 'under the control of ICE' and can only be released by federal authorities. Reyes said he couldn't offer an example of what kind of public record would be covered by the agreement but said it could be federal documents — like a detainer request itself.
Advocacy groups say the language could be read as giving Miami-Dade the green light to remove inmates' names from local search portals once the people are being held for ICE, making it impossible for their custody status to be known to civilians.
Local jails release inmates to ICE when the person has a federal 'detainer' request attached to their name in federal law enforcement records. Those detainer requests ask a jail to hold someone for up to two business days past when they would otherwise be free to go on whatever local charges brought them into the jail system.
Juan Osorio, who is part of the Tallahassee-based Rising Voices Collective advisory group, was also in the audience for Monday's canceled committee hearing. He said the public-records language is problematic.
'It would basically make it impossible — or very difficult — for the public to get that information,' he said. Osorio said he wants to hear from the mayor's administration on its interpretation of the language. 'They need to clarify that for the next meeting,' he said.
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