Officials in Florida have been accused of quietly deleting records that showed American citizens were swept up by the Trump administration's immigration crackdown days after reporters began asking about them.
Under Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), the state has worked closely with the White House to advance President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation agenda. Miami New Times reported this month that the State Board of Immigration Enforcement published new figures on arrests and encounters with people suspected of being undocumented immigrants.
Since Aug. 1, law enforcement agents in the state encountered more than 5,200 such people, according to the report. On Oct. 14, the dashboard indicated that 21 U.S. citizens were arrested and charged, and nine other American citizens had run-ins with law enforcement but were not arrested, the report said.
But when the newspaper asked why U.S. citizens were arrested, "those figures vanished from the dashboard."
"New Times emailed the Florida State Board of Immigration Enforcement, DeSantis’ office, and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) for an explanation. While we did not receive a response, the dashboard figures for U.S. citizen encounters and arrests changed significantly by the time of this reporting. The dashboard now shows there have been only two reported encounters with U.S. citizens, and only one citizen was arrested on local or state charges. State agencies report that they encountered 104 people whose country of citizenship is unknown," the report said.
Alana Greer, an attorney and cofounder of the Community Justice Project, told the outlet figures were "incredibly disturbing."
"We know that programs like 287(g) and other forms of mass immigration enforcement routinely ensnares U.S. citizens and others with lawful status, and it’s an indicator of how faulty the broader set of data that these agencies are relying on to do enforcement and the inevitable results have been time and time again, racial profiling, and violations of constitutional rights, and that should concern everyone, regardless of their immigration status, as the system continues to expand," said Greer.
