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Tag: Orange County ICE

  • 2025 Year in Review: 10 ways the City Beautiful stood up this year

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    A No Kings protest in Orlando, 2025 Credit: Matt Keller Lehman

    Amid a year filled with the chaos filtering down from the White House and our state government, Orlando once again proved that it’s possible to stand up, show up and send a message. Locals this year protested against fascism, organized to provide transparency for family members of those detained by ICE, and donated to food banks and other organizations this year to help those in need during the 43-day federal government shutdown.

    This is the energy we love to see in our friends and neighbors. Here’s to a lot more of it in 2026.

    Protesting the Trump administration under the slogan of ‘No Kings’
    Millions of Americans nationwide, including thousands in Central Florida, rallied against the Trump administration this year at sporadic “No Kings” protests organized by local activists fed up with the administration’s policies and funding cuts. Our reporter and photojournalist contributors documented Orlandoans who showed up across racial and generational lines, protesting proposed cuts to programs like Medicaid and SNAP, as well as the Trump administration’s immigration policy, billionaire Elon Musk’s ketamine-inspired “Department of Government Efficiency” and the generally hateful rhetoric coming from the White House. Several rallies were organized over the year at Orlando City Hall, but don’t worry, Kissimmee, we saw you, too.

    Protesting Trump’s immigrant crackdown in Waterford Lakes
    Nearly 200 Orlando residents came together near the Waterford Lakes Town Center over the first weekend of February to raise their voices loud and clear against policy decisions by Donald Trump, Stephen Miller and Elon Musk — particularly against immigration crackdowns and mass deportations. Protesters held signs with messages such as “U.S. Means All of Us,” “Hate never made America great,” and “I DRINK MY HORCHATA WARM BC FUCK ICE.”

    Rallying against the state’s erasure of Pulse’s rainbow-colored sidewalk
    Despite funding a paint job for it last year, the state Department of Transportation decided this year that the rainbow-colored crosswalk outside the former Pulse nightclub was too woke and painted over it in the dead of night. And Orlando wasn’t having it. After all, the rainbow colors were installed to honor the 49 people killed during a mass shooting at Pulse in 2016, and served as sort of a makeshift memorial while the OnePulse Foundation stumbled around for years not building one. Local officials said it served as a roadway safety strategy, too. Many community members here saw the state’s paint job as a targeted insult to the LGBTQ community — not the first we’ve seen, and it’s unlikely to be the last.

    Donating to food banks to help local families in need
    Protest actions aren’t the only way that Orlandoans stood up this year. Orlando also showed up by donating to food banks like Second Harvest and to the airport as thousands of federal workers in Central Florida were either furloughed during the government shutdown or forced to work without pay. 

    Standing up for immigrants detained in the county jail
    Dozens of civil rights, legal and labor groups organized a coalition this year to call on Orange County leaders to ensure greater transparency for families of individuals arrested and detained by ICE agents on federal immigration holds. In response, the county directed Orange County Corrections to make it easier for families to identify family members held in the local jail, which  has doubled as a temporary holding center for ICE detainees. Advocates regularly showed up to county commission meetings this year to keep the pressure on and organized press conferences to raise public awareness through media outlets (like Orlando Weekly), too. 

    Standing in solidarity with striking Starbucks workers
    As workers at a unionized Starbucks location in Oviedo joined a national strike against Starbucks this month, within the first week baristas began to see community members from groups like Central Florida Jobs With Justice and the Democratic Socialists of America show up on the picket line to support them, in addition to several candidates running for elected office (and, eventually, U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost). Workers at the Oviedo store first voted to unionize in 2022 and have been fighting through their union — Starbucks Workers United — to negotiate a first contract with Starbucks that would cover them and more than 11,000 other Starbucks workers across more than 550 locations who are also unionized. Florida isn’t a state that’s known for being particularly friendly to unions. But unionized baristas locally have told our staff reporter they see their fight as one not just to benefit their own working conditions and livelihoods, but that of future generations.

    Orlando punks raised funds for Palestinian relief the DIY way
    Local DIY venue The S.P.O.T. (RIP) held a Palestine benefit this past February, hosting not just bands but food, clothing and jewelry vendors and a CFL Queers for Palestine booth for information on how to help locally. The lineup for the night comprised nine hardcore and punk bands from all around Florida: Right Effort, Andwhentheskywasopened, Noheartleft, AI Death Calculator, Unregistered Weapon, Bonus, Flowers for Emily, Gravess and Watts. Each band that night had a few words to say regarding Palestine and colonization, often taking the opportunity to remind the crowd of the roots of punk in its resistance to genocide. All told, the gig organizers managed to raise $3,020.68 in donations to be sent directly to Healing Our Homeland, a grassroots women-led organization that has been providing aid and resources to Palestinians since 2016.

    Postal service workers stood up against privatization
    The threat of privatization isn’t new for U.S. Postal Service workers — or the Department of Veterans Affairs, while we’re at it — but under Trump’s second term in the White House, the chance that threat could become reality has felt closer than ever. At least that’s what we heard from postal workers in Central Florida who believe USPS should remain a public service focused on serving communities indiscriminately, not padding the pockets of billionaires. Postal workers in Central Florida and across the country organized rallies this spring to say “HELL NO!” to privatizing America’s mail delivery. 

    Advocates called on Disney to investigate alleged use of low-wage prison labor to fold Disney balloons
    Local members of Central Florida Jobs With Justice stood side by side with formerly incarcerated workers outside Disney World this fall, calling on Disney to disclose that one of their subcontractors is paying Minnesota prisoners an average of 90 cents an hour to fold Disney character balloons. You know, the same balloons that cost customers $45 through a third-party vendor (or more, if you want it delivered to your Disney World Resort hotel room) that Disney promotes. According to the Minnesota Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, Anagram International — a manufacturer of Disney balloons — is one of the largest contractors for the Minnesota Corrections System. Local advocates called on Disney to disclose the pay rates for prisoners who fold these balloons and to publicly advocate in support of raising those prisoners’ wages.

    Local public school teachers defied DeSantis’ effort to dismantle their union
    When Gov. DeSantis signed into law a bill in 2023 that aimed to dismantle the state’s teachers unions, teachers across the state rose up to meet the challenge. And that continued this year, as teachers, school psychologists, librarians and other school staff in Central Florida school districts (including Orange and Osceola) voted in favor of keeping their unions certified, as they are now annually subject to a recertification process. For teachers, a union means they get a chance to negotiate higher salaries, duty-free lunches (so they can eat their lunch in peace), stronger paid maternity leave benefits, and generally have a voice on the job, collectively, that otherwise isn’t guaranteed. 

    Orlando’s daily dose of what matters. Subscribe to The Daily Weekly.

    Just a few extra scoops of serotonin for you

    Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings wrote a letter to the U.S. Marshals Service on Monday seeking full reimbursement for jailing ICE detainees

    SB 482 would ban minors from access artificial intelligence chatbot accounts

    This article appears in Dec. 24-30, 2025.



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    Orlando Weekly Staff
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  • Orange County mayor says local taxpayers “unfairly” shouldering cost of federal ICE duties

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    Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings wrote a letter to the U.S. Marshals Service on Monday, asking the feds to fully reimburse the county for the cost of jailing people who have been detained on immigration charges on behalf of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a federal agency.

    According to Mayor Demings, compliance with federal immigration enforcement has already cost county taxpayers more than $333,000 and counting. The county, like other jail operators in Florida, has an agreement with ICE, known as an intergovernmental services agreement, that allows ICE officers to detain federal inmates in Orange County Jail temporarily who are allegedly in the country illegally. 

    The U.S. Marshals Service, however, is not fully reimbursing the cost for doing so. While the cost of detaining a person is roughly $180 per person, per day, county officials say the feds are only reimbursing the county $88 per person, leaving local taxpayers on the hook for the rest.

    “Orange County has done our part to ensure our operations are compliant with both federal and state laws which have mandated our participation in supporting immigration enforcement activities,” Demings’ letter reads. “But I am deeply concerned that the fiscal impact of these legislative mandates is being unfairly shouldered by Orange County, to the tune of over $333,592.”

    According to Demings, Orange County Jail has seen a “continually increasing” number of people booked by or on behalf of ICE, with over 5,000 ICE detainees booked into the jail over just the last eight months alone, including those detained in neighboring areas outside Orange County.

    Although county officials formally requested a renegotiated reimbursement cost from the federal government for housing ICE detainees in the local jail in August, Demings says the county has not received an updated figure or full reimbursement as requested, to date.

    “The burden of the expense related to immigration enforcement activities should be borne by the federal government, not local governments who’ve been forced to follow the law in support of your initiatives,” Demings wrote.

    “The burden of the expense related to immigration enforcement activities should be borne by the federal government, not local governments who’ve been forced to follow the law in support of your initiatives.”

    It’s the closest thing to a mic-drop that locals are bound to get from Demings, who has faced heat from local immigrant rights advocates this year over his professed sense of helplessness to address concerns about aggressive federal immigration enforcement in Orange County.

    “We are seeing people aggressively being taken by masked agents in our communities. Unmarked uniforms, arrests without warrants,” Hope Community Center organizing director Ericka Gomez-Tejeda told Demings and county commissioners last week during a county commissioner board meeting.

    Advocates noted that, under separate state agency agreements with ICE, local communities have “incredibly” seen officers not just from ICE, but from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission and state Department of Financial Services “in our streets, at our doors,  working for ICE.”

    “When an agency meant to protect the environment is instead stopping community members and becoming a pipeline to immigration detention, this kind of enforcement erodes [trust] and pushes the agency far outside their intended role,” said Farmworker Association of Florida organizer Aaron Quen-Perez, speaking at a press conference ahead of the board meeting last week.

    Demings, however, dismissed the county’s responsibility for addressing such concerns. “The resolution to this issue is not in these chambers, it is somewhere else,” Demings stated bluntly. “If there’s a complaint about how these individuals are doing their business, if they’re violating rights, I believe that the appropriate venue for those types of complaints is either with the federal government, with the state, or the courts — not the Orange County Commission.”

    The Immigrants Are Welcome Here coalition, made up of more than 60 local legal and advocacy groups, including Hope Community Center, has been advocating over the last year for stronger rights for individuals detained by ICE under the Trump administration at the local jail.

    According to NPR, more than 1.6 million immigrants in the U.S. lost their legal status in the first 11 months of President Donald Trump’s second term that began in January, including individuals previously accepted to enter the country through temporary protected status or asylum programs.

    Calls to oppose or publicly challenge Trump’s mass detention and deportation plans, however, have put Demings in a tough spot. Demings, a former sheriff and police chief, recently launched a bid for Florida governor and is running as a Democrat in a solidly red state that overwhelmingly supported Trump in the 2024 presidential election. 

    Still, Demings has made it clear he wants the county to, at the very least, be reimbursed for detaining federal inmates on behalf of ICE — even if he’s less interested in investigating the circumstances under which those individuals were brought to the jail in the first place.

    “I request the USMS expedite the renegotiation of our IGSA and provide us with a complete reimbursement of Orange County’s expenses related to your immigration enforcement initiatives, such that our local taxpayers no longer bear the costs of your initiative,” Demings’ letter to the USMS reads.

    The financial burden, as Demings wrote, amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars so far, in addition to a greater burden on the county’s already understaffed and overburdened corrections system. Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, for its part, is now offering unauthorized immigrants an “exit bonus” of $3,000 to “self-deport” and avoid the detention process altogether, the Wall Street Journal reports.

    The DHS, a federal agency that includes ICE, has billed the “exit bonus” as a “limited time offer” for the holiday season, according to WSJ. The Trump administration previously offered a $1,000 bonus to migrants to “self-deport,” although the Guardian reports that some have taken up the offer, but never actually received any money.

    Beyond the financial burden, of course, local advocates for immigrants in Orange County have also highlighted the emotional and physical toll of the Trump administration’s heightened immigration enforcement efforts. “Our communities are living the nightmares that we and every U.S. American citizen dreads,” Gomez-Tejeda said during a press conference on aggressive ICE enforcement tactics last week.

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    “I believe that the appropriate venue for those types of complaints is either with the federal government, with the state or the courts,” Mayor Demings said when pressed

    The money was requested for AI language translators, pepper spray, GPS trackers, handcuffs, bonuses, and more

    Two migrant detention centers may have violated international standards by imposing conditions that could amount to torture, the group claims



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    McKenna Schueler
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