Broward sheriff defies DeSantis over ICE deportation cooperation
Gregory Tony said BSO won't join broad ICE raids in Broward, even as state law demands "best efforts" and DeSantis pushes deeper deportation cooperation. The clash hits a 2-million-person county.
Broward County Sheriff Gregory Tony said at a June 3 Broward County Commission budget workshop that the Broward Sheriff’s Office would not take part in sweeping ICE raids that went door to door, arrested children, or entered daycare centers or restaurants to remove people. The stance put him on a collision course with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ immigration agenda and set off a warning from state officials that Broward’s top law-enforcement agency was out of step with Florida’s new enforcement regime.
Tony has not said Broward is breaking with Immigration and Customs Enforcement altogether. In writing, he said BSO has supported ICE and would comply with the law, and the agency already has standing cooperation agreements in place, including a 287(g) Task Force Model pact signed Feb. 26, 2025, and a 287(g) Warrant Service Officer agreement that reports say has existed since 2019. Florida officials also said all 67 county sheriffs had signed ICE agreements allowing some form of immigration cooperation, which makes Broward’s posture less a full refusal than a dispute over how far local deputies should go.
The legal pressure point is Florida Statute 908.104, enacted in the 2025 immigration package, which says state and local law-enforcement agencies and the officials who supervise them shall use “best efforts” to support federal immigration enforcement. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier put that law directly in Tony’s path in a June 9 letter, warning that Broward could face a lawsuit or removal from office if Tony did not cooperate. Any court fight would not stay abstract in a county with 2,013,317 residents, because it would put Broward’s legal budget and taxpayer dollars on the line.
That conflict lands harder in Broward than it would in many Florida counties. The U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020-24 estimates put Broward’s foreign-born share at 36.9 percent, and 43.8 percent of residents age 5 and older speak a language other than English at home. A county demographic report shows how much that population has grown, from 113,339 foreign-born residents in 1980 to 577,843 in 2014, when the foreign-born share was 32 percent.
DeSantis has pressed state agencies deeper into immigration enforcement all year. On Feb. 19, 2025, he announced additional ICE memoranda of agreement involving the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the Florida State Guard. He later said Operation Tidal Wave produced more than 10,000 arrests over eight months, and state and federal officials touted a June 2025 one-week operation that made more than 1,100 arrests, then described as the largest immigration enforcement operation in Florida history. By June 10, the pressure in Broward had eased after Tony clarified that immigration was not a priority, and Uthmeier publicly thanked him for reversing course.
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