The issue sparks fiery division nationwide, often on partisan lines. So the politics of the law-and-order official leading Florida’s efforts may surprise some.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla.—As federal agents conduct immigration enforcement operations around the country, protests often erupt, at times involving violent attacks.
Some high-profile Democrat politicians have urged their followers to fight back against law enforcement officers as they seek to arrest illegal immigrants.
In Florida, by contrast, the removal of illegal immigrants mostly moves along peacefully, even as the state leads the nation in cooperating with federal immigration enforcement efforts, a state official and a top federal immigration official told The Epoch Times.
And what may surprise some is that it’s a Democrat—appointed by Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis—who’s leading the state’s collaboration with federal agencies.
As executive director of the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, a big part of Dave Kerner’s mission has become capturing and removing illegal immigrants from the Sunshine State. And under his leadership, the state’s effort to assist federal law enforcement agencies is setting records, a report from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shows.
Since late March, 7,361 have been arrested in collaborative immigration enforcement operations, Kerner said.
Texas is second in number of agencies collaborating with federal immigration enforcement. Only a few states don’t have any law enforcement agencies with existing or pending agreements to help with federal immigration enforcement, ICE records show.
Still, as successful as Florida’s collaboration has been in the eyes of law enforcement officials, the job of removing illegal immigrants from the state has no clear end in sight.
“But give us a little time,” said Jeffrey Dinise, chief patrol agent with the Border Patrol’s Miami Sector.
Dinise oversees border security operations between the ports of entry across about 187,000 square miles, including 1,279 miles of Florida shoreline along the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of America.
About 1.1 million illegal immigrants told federal officials they had a sponsor in Florida and would be headed there, he said. There’s no way to know how many of those actually made it to the state, Dinise said.
Then there are the “gotaways,” the unknown millions who crossed the border illegally and evaded capture.
About 45 percent of illegal immigrants arrested in Florida are gotaways, Kerner said. So there’s no way to know exactly how many of them make their home in the state.
It’s generally assumed that most gotaways avoided Border Patrol because of a criminal past in another country or an intention to break other laws here in the United States, Kerner and Dinise told The Epoch Times.
Now, with Kerner orchestrating Florida’s effort, law enforcement agencies in all 67 of the state’s counties collaborate with federal operations to remove illegal immigrants. And troopers with the Florida Highway Patrol—an agency Kerner manages—work daily with officers from both ICE and Customs and Border Protection.
By Nanette Holt
