Florida officials have been accused of quietly scrubbing records showing U.S. citizens were swept up in the Trump administration’s immigration dragnet after a local paper started asking questions.
The state, led by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, has collaborated closely with the administration to carry out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation push. Earlier this month, Florida launched an online dashboard tracking arrests of suspected undocumented immigrants.
The Miami New Times reports that on Oct. 14, the dashboard showed that 21 U.S. citizens had been arrested and charged since Aug. 1. The dashboard reportedly counted another nine U.S. citizens who had encounters with law enforcement but were not arrested.
Yet, the New Times reports that when it inquired why U.S. citizens were being arrested in the immigration sweeps, the numbers suddenly began to change.
The dashboard’s “Demographics” tab now shows that two U.S. citizens were arrested on local or state charges since Aug. 1. No encounters with U.S. citizens that did not result in arrests appear in the records.
An Oct. 10 Tampa Bay Times article previously reported that the dashboard showed “at least two dozen” encounters with U.S. citizens.
According to the New Times’ Oct. 15 report, neither the Florida State Board of Immigration Enforcement, DeSantis’ office, nor the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) responded to a request for an explanation for the shifting figures.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the same offices for comment on the New Times report.
The reported inconsistency in the state’s immigration data and the arrests of U.S. citizens drew sharp criticism from Tessa Petit, the executive director of the immigration advocacy organization Florida Immigrant Coalition.
“This incident raises fundamental questions about both the accuracy of Florida’s immigration enforcement data and the due process rights of everyone who resides in our state,” Petit said in a press release. “If U.S. citizens can be arrested under these operations is alarming enough, but the fact that the information is then deleted from public view is even more worrisome. Facts are being hidden from Floridians, and we deserve to know why.”
Countless cities and all 67 sheriff’s offices in Florida have entered into the 287(g) program, in which state and local law enforcement partner with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), giving them federal immigration powers. Immigration advocates have condemned the program, warning that it fuels racial profiling.
As of Tuesday, 2,444 arrests have been made under the program since Aug. 1, according to the dashboard’s data, while another 4,681 suspected undocumented immigrants were arrested outside the program’s scope.
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