A revised agreement between Orange County and the federal government formally took effect Monday, June 29. This agreement offers a higher reimbursement rate for the county to temporarily detain people in the Orange County Jail on behalf of federal agencies like the Drug Enforcement Administration — but notably, no longer U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Federal reimbursement for the county to hold federal inmates for up to 72 hours will increase from $88 per person per day, up to $125 per person, after nearly a year of negotiations with the U.S. Marshals Service.
Meanwhile, a separate agreement with ICE approved by county leaders last month now effectively limits how long the jail is obligated to detain people on a federal immigration hold, which are a civil (not criminal) offense. ICE signed that agreement on June 4, a county spokesperson confirmed.
“This moment was made possible by more than a year of organizing, bringing together advocates, faith leaders, community organizations, and directly impacted families to demand change,” said Felipe Sousa-Lazaballet, executive director of the Hope CommUnity Center in Apopka, in a text to Orlando Weekly Wednesday morning.
Sousa-Lazaballet is a formerly undocumented immigrant brought to the U.S. from Brazil as a child, who later benefited from the federal DACA program and today has permanent U.S. citizenship. He’s currently running for a seat in the Florida House.
“We were relentless,” Sousa-Lazaballet said of local advocacy efforts, “and this victory is a reminder that ordinary people can accomplish extraordinary things when they are guided by love and a shared vision for justice.”
“This victory is a reminder that ordinary people can accomplish extraordinary things when they are guided by love and a shared vision for justice.”
Felipe Sousa-Lazaballet
A shift in agreements
Under the county’s old agreement with ICE, the Orange County Jail was obligated to temporarily hold people detained by federal immigration enforcement for up to 72 hours, although local immigration advocates said that, in practice, this limit was often extended or manipulated by federal agents through a practice of shuffling people in and out and back into the jail.
County corrections officials confirmed this was happening, and Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings consequently warned ICE to end this practice in early February, citing in part the exorbitant expense to county taxpayers: an estimated $180 per day per person to hold them in the local jail on behalf of the federal government.
“The lack of your ability to offer us a fair and reasonable rate of reimbursement within an exceptionally reasonable amount of time has put Orange County in a remarkable position,” Demings wrote in a Feb. 13 letter to U.S. Marshals Service, the federal agency that negotiates terms of the IGSA. The county first initiated talks for a higher reimbursement rate in August 2025.
Under the county’s new agreement with ICE, the jail may only hold ICE detainees for up to 48 hours.
The agreement, known as a basic ordering agreement, also stipulates that the county will receive $50 in reimbursement per person for that 48-hour period — although that may increase by $150 if the county applies for state grant money to assist.
County leaders believe the change — carving ICE out of the IGSA and establishing a BOA with ICE instead — will help reduce the jail population of ICE detainees, particularly those without outstanding criminal charges, as a legally permissible form of harm reduction.
From December 2024 to the end of 2025, the number of people held on average each day in the Orange County Jail on behalf of ICE with no local criminal charges increased 900 percent — from just nine people to 92. In January, that number shot up to an average daily population of 142.
Since February, however, the number of ICE detainees held in the jail without criminal charges has significantly declined, the Orlando Sentinel reported. Danny Banks, public safety director for Orange County, confirmed that since county commissioners voted to change the county’s agreement with ICE on June 2, that number has continued to go down.
“Since the Orange County Board of County Commissioners endorsed the agreement on June 2, 2026, we have continued to see a consistently low number of ICE detainees housed at the Orange County Jail,” Banks said in a statement. “We are encouraged by this trend and remain hopeful that these numbers will continue to stay low moving forward.”
As of Tuesday morning, the jail had eight male ICE detainees without any local charges and zero women held solely on a federal immigration hold. Roughly 80 percent of federal immigration arrests that have occurred in Florida over the last year have occurred through traffic stops conducted by Florida Highway Patrol, according to state data.
The vast majority of people in ICE detention nationwide — about 70 percent — have no criminal convictions, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data distribution organization.
Complying with Florida law
The county said it is unable to restrict the detention of people without local criminal charges altogether.
“State law requires us to uniquely support ICE incarcerations, regardless of whether or not there are also state or local charges against the inmates,” a county spokesperson told the Weekly.
Under state law, Orange County must have either a BOA or IGSA with ICE, as a jail operator, and demonstrate “best efforts” to support federal immigration enforcement. County commissioners last year were threatened with forced removal from office by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, should the county show any form of resistance to cooperation with ICE.
Mayor Demings, a former candidate for Florida governor who recently suspended his campaign following a cancer diagnosis, said the shift to a BOA is “the result of this board’s action to maintain compliance with Florida law, while serving the best interests of the taxpayers of Orange County, surrounding our role in housing federal inmates.”
The county’s IGSA was first established with the U.S. Marshals Service decades ago to house federal inmates on behalf of federal agencies like the Drug Enforcement Administration and Federal Bureau of Investigations. In 2011, the agreement was amended to include ICE.
For more than a year, advocates with a grassroots group dubbed the Immigrants Are Welcome Here coalition — organized shortly after President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025 — mobilized appearances at Orange County board meetings to advocate for the rights of immigrants held in the Orange County Jail.
This coalition of social justice organizations, immigrant rights groups and labor organizations urged commissioners to ensure due process for those detained and transparency for families who were being held, as the Trump administration quickly took action to deliver on the president’s commitment to conduct “largest deportation operation in American history.”
“This is an important step toward restoring trust between our immigrant communities and local government, strengthening due process, and ending the misuse of taxpayer dollars so those resources can be invested in urgent community needs like affordable housing,” Sousa-Lazaballet said. “We are grateful to the County Commission for believing in our efforts and putting the well-being of their constituents first.”
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