Hialeah, a city of immigrants, is set to have its cops take on immigration enforcement

Miami Herald

11-03-2025

Hialeah, one of the the cities with the largest proportions of Hispanic residents in the United States, could soon become one of the first Miami-Dade municipalities to officially collaborate with the Trump administration on immigration enforcement.
On Tuesday, the city council will present a resolution authorizing Mayor Esteban 'Steve' Bovo to sign an agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement that would deputize officers of the Hialeah Police Department to perform limited immigration-agent duties. That includes the power to interrogate and arrest an immigrant they believe is violating immigration law, as well as the authority to serve immigration warrants and immigration detainers.
The Hialeah Police Department's request to join ICE's 287(g) program — under which state and local police assist the federal government in immigration enforcement — underscores the changing role of local public safety agencies under the Trump administration. Enforcing immigration law is the federal government's job, but President Donald Trump has made clear that state, local and county police agencies should play a role in plans to deport millions of undocumented immigrants in the U.S.
Since taking office, Trump has moved to strip hundreds of thousands of Haitians, Cubans, and Venezuelans of their legal status, leaving large swaths of Miami's immigrant communities vulnerable to deportation — including some newer residents of Hialeah, raising questions about how a partnership with ICE could play out in the mostly foreign-born, nearly all Hispanic city.
In a request to Bovo and the Hialeah City Council, Deputy City Attorney Barbara T. Govea said the police department wants to enter the agreement with ICE to 'provide operational assistance in the form of law enforcement services and resources to adequately respond to illegal immigration.'
In Florida, state law requires that 'sheriffs or chief correctional models operating a county detention facility' must enter 287(g) agreements with ICE. Earlier this month, Florida's sheriffs announced that all of the state's county jails had done so.
As of March 10, the police departments in Coral Gables, Davie, the Town of Palm Beach, Palm Beach Gardens and Key West have all signed agreements with the federal agency, as have more than two dozen other Florida cities, according to public records.
On Tuesday morning, the Coral Gables City Commission is expected to discuss its police department's 287(g) agreement, signed on March 7. Immigration advocates will host a press conference denouncing the partnership.
Gables City Attorney Cristina Suárez and City Manager Alberto Parjus did not respond to questions Monday asking if they authorized or were aware of the task force agreement, nor did they explain why the agreement didn't go to the City Commission for approval. Through a city spokesperson, Parjus said the issue will be discussed at Tuesday's meeting.
Jose Smith, former municipal attorney for the cities of Miami Beach and North Miami Beach, told the Miami Herald that police departments operate under the jurisdiction and authority of each city's commission through the city manager.
'If a police department, or a specific task force within it, is assigned to another city, state, or federal agency, it can only be done with an 'inter-local agreement' passed by the majority of the commission with a resolution,' Smith said.
Influx of new arrivals
Three quarters of Hialeah's 221,000 residents were born outside the U.S. Once a sanctuary for Cuban exiles escaping economic and political oppression, the city is now wrestling with the growing presence of new immigrants from Cuba and elsewhere in Latin America. Bovo, who is preparing to step down from his position and take a lobbying job in Washington, D.C., has highlighted the strain on resources new arrivals have caused. A staunch Trump supporter, Bovo also promoted renaming Hialeah's main avenue, Palm Avenue, in honor of president Trump in 2023, a year before Trump's reelection, with the unanimous approval of the council.
In 2024, Bovo claimed that as many as 80,000 Cubans had arrived in Hialeah over the previous two years, stressing that the city's resources were stretched thin. He pointed to the fact that more than 420,000 migrants had entered the U.S. from Cuba during that period, likening the influx to a 'Mariel on steroids,' a reference to the 1980 Mariel boatlift that brought a massive wave of 125,000 Cuban refugees to Florida.
In response, the city council voted in 2024 to formally rebuke the Biden administration's 'open border policies,' calling on the federal government to impose stricter measures to curb the flow of migrants into northwest Miami-Dade County.
Hialeah Council Member Monica Perez told the Herald she agrees with any policies that make the city safer, and said she supported the 287(g) agreement. Hialeah has previously ranked among the safest cities in Florida, an achievement city officials have touted.
Many of new arrivals that the Trump administration has moved to strip of legal status have landed in Hialeah and elsewhere in South Florida in recent years. Critics of the 287(g) program say that the partnerships with ICE erode trust in local law enforcement. They argue that they can discourage immigrants from coming forward as crime victims and witnesses and keeps them in the shadows.
Jose Torres, the executive officer of the Hialeah Police chief, said all Hialeah police officers would train to participate in immigration law enforcement. He downplayed concerns regarding the potential impact of immigration enforcement efforts on the city's residents. He said the local agencies already collaborate with Miami-Dade County, which has signed itself a 287(g) agreement, paving the way for Hialeah to sign its own.
'If someone is pulled over for a traffic violation, we will ask for their license as we always do. But I cannot predict what will happen in a month or a year — this agreement is new,' Torres said.