Vero Beach Police Chief David Currey warned earlier this month that top state officials weren’t merely asking the city to cooperate fully with federal authorities in the Trump Administration’s ongoing crackdown on illegal immigration.
They were demanding it.
And if the City Council didn’t approve the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s “memorandum of agreement,” which Tallahassee sent to all 67 counties and every Florida municipality with a law-enforcement agency, there would be potentially harsh consequences.
“The reality is,” Currey told council members at their March 11 meeting, “somebody is going to be made an example of.”
That’s the way things work in Florida nowadays: A heavy-handed, full-of-itself state government decides what’s best for cities, counties and school districts – and then enacts overreaching and sometimes-wrongheaded laws to ensure compliance.
We, the people? Home rule be damned.
Tallahassee expects us to do what we’re told and like it, even as more and more of the decisions that impact our communities are made in the state capital.
“We, at the local level, can lobby for and against bills proposed in the Legislature,” Vero Beach Mayor John Cotugno said, “but once they become law, we have no choice but to abide by them.”
Just ask folks in Fort Myers, where three city council members who dared oppose the ICE agreement – a 3-3 vote on March 17 prevented its approval – were threatened with removal by Gov. Ron DeSantis and prosecution by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier.
To no one’s surprise, given the venomous tone that dominates today’s us-against-them political discourse, the council members also received death threats.
Only four days later, the Fort Myers council responded to the backlash by scheduling an emergency meeting at which they voted unanimously to approve the agreement with ICE.
It’s worth noting, though, that the decision wasn’t well received in council chamber. According to news reports, the three-hour special session opened with “two hours of spirited public comment,” and most speakers voiced opposition to the agreement.
Vero Beach Vice Mayor Linda Moore expressed similar apprehension when she joined Councilman John Carroll, who cited fiscal concerns, in voting against the agreement, which would allow city police officers to be trained – and authorized to act – as immigration agents to assist ICE in his mission.
Ultimately, the Vero Beach council adopted the agreement and, as of last weekend, all indications were that the 3-2 vote was enough to satisfy DeSantis and Uthmeier.
Both Moore and Carroll, who cast his “no” vote only after a dramatic pause on the dais, said they had not been contacted by anyone at the state level. They did hear from community members who questioned and criticized their decisions, however.
“I’m getting some grief,” Moore said, adding that she had no problem with the ICE-funded training aspect of the agreement, but she wasn’t comfortable with “other agencies coming in and taking control of our police department.”
Likewise, Carroll said he wasn’t opposed to the city’s police officers being trained to work with federal agencies, but he saw the agreement as “too open-ended,” because it didn’t set limits on how often or how long they could be temporarily reassigned to assist ICE.
Currey, though, said additional information he received from the state and federal authorities last week indicated that it’s unlikely Vero Beach’s ICE-trained officers would be sent outside our county.
Still, it was unclear whether the federal government or city taxpayers would cover the costs of paying overtime to other officers to fill the shifts of those called to ICE duty.
Not that any of those issues really mattered.
Whether Moore, Carroll or anyone else disagreed with the memorandum should have been irrelevant – because state law already requires local law-enforcement agencies to use their “best efforts” to assist federal immigration authorities.
In fact, sheriff’s offices and police departments throughout Florida have been working with ICE under an existing agreement that predates the sweeping package of immigration laws DeSantis signed last month in support of President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation agenda.
So why bother to require every city with a police department to approve an agreement that is, essentially, redundant?
One local official, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said the state sent the memorandum as a “test to see who’s with them and who’s against them.”
That’s certainly possible.
Based on recent history, however, it’s more likely that our upper-tier state officials simply couldn’t pass up another opportunity to publicly flex their muscles and make us another offer we can’t refuse, just to make sure nobody forgets who’s really running Florida.
For those who haven’t noticed: The decades-long erosion of home rule in our state has been rapidly accelerating in recent years, as we continue to cede more control to Tallahassee, where the governor and Legislature use their expanding powers to dictate policy down to cities, counties and school districts.
That’s a concern for many longtime Floridians, who fondly remember when local governments – run by elected officials who understood the unique characteristics of their communities and responded to the needs and wants of their constituents – had the most significant impact on our quality of life.
Regardless of political affiliation, we steadfastly believed the most effective government was the government closest to home.
Apparently, that’s no longer the case, as the state continues to seize and supplant what was local authority.
Now comes our governor’s version of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, more commonly known as DOGE, a task force created to eliminate waste, fraud and inefficiency in state and local governments throughout Florida.
You read that correctly: In addition to examining the expenditures of a state he has been running since 2019, DeSantis’ DOGE will delve into the finances of city and county governments, launching yet another assault on home rule.
It’s obvious that DeSantis and the Legislature don’t trust that locally elected city councils, county commissions and school boards can be trusted to make the right decisions.
Instead, they have deluded themselves into believing they are better-equipped to rule from afar, in too many cases ignoring the will of local communities and embracing an Orwellian one-size-fits-all government that imposes statewide mandates and doesn’t tolerate dissent.
So you can disagree with Moore and Carroll for not voting to approve the ICE agreement, which probably won’t have any noticeably negative impact on the city or its police department.
But they shouldn’t be punished for voicing their concerns – and, judging by the applause in the chamber, those of at least some of their constituents – regarding the memorandum.
If anything, we should be concerned about a state government that is looking to make an example of any public official who expresses a different opinion.
