Fort Myers Council reverses field
Four days after a deadlocked vote rejected an agreement for Fort Myers police officers to be trained as agents of U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, City Council members voted unanimously to approve the agreement.
The Special Emergency Meeting on Friday afternoon produced a standing-room-only crowd in chambers and a packed overflow room outside. A parade of residents spoke in opposition to the agreement, offering concerns over the Constitutionality of the ICE approach and the vagueness of what turned out to be a forced agreement.
The 3-3 vote on Monday produced threats against the three councilwomen who voted no, threats of removal from office from Gov. Ron DeSantis, threats of prosecution from Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier and harsh criticism from Naples Congressman Byron Donalds, who just a few days previous had announced his Trump-backed run for governor.
It also spawned death threats against the three councilwomen, Darla Bonk, Diana Giraldo and Terolyn Watson.
More: Fort Myers City council, in a reversal, approves ICE memorandum with police department
More: Facing death threats, Fort Myers council members will re-think vote against ICE partnership
While nearly all speakers opposed the agreement there were, unlike Monday, exceptions. State Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka said called the council vote 'technical approval', saying the policy debate had already taken place in Tallahassee and council members who voted against the agreement would be breaking the law.
"We are a law-and-order state," she said. "We will not permit sanctuary cities or sanctuary city policies."
Persons-Mulicka raised the name of Officer Adam Jobbers-Miller, a Fort Myers officer killed by an undocumented alien in 2018.
"The person who shot him should not have been here," she said. "He was here unlawfully."
Persons-Mulicka raised the specter of the drug fentanyl, which officials claim flows into the country across the Mexican border.
Her words were echoed by David Miller, the father of the slain officer. Had the agreement been in place in 2018, he said, his son might be alive today.
"My grandchildren would have a father," he said. "I would still have a son."
Another speaker later pointed out that Jobbers-Miller's killer, a mentally ill Wisner Desmaret, had been under an ICE hold as early as 2010, but it wasn't enforced, freeing him.
For most of the 3-hour meeting, however, council heard only opposition to the agreement.
City business owner Pamela Templeton said she has read the agreement.
"What I saw was a hastily written 'sign this' with a bunch of blanks," she said. "To say there don't need to be answers before you sign?"
Templeton pointed out the local police already work with ICE under an existing agreement.
"It's not unreasonable to know everything on the table before a vote," she said.
Councilwoman Giraldo, herself an immigrant, stressed the existence of that agreement. After the vote she said that "the media" had mischaracterized the vote as being against cooperating with ICE.
'I want to set the record straight about the vote we took on Monday," she said in a statement after the meeting. "Press accounts and comments from others in government were inaccurate. They left the impression that I was objecting to the city cooperating with ICE. That's not true."
Giraldo did repeat concerns she voiced before the first vote and that were echoed by the public. She cited text in the agreement that says city police can stop and interrogate someone "believed to be an alien" and "arrest without warrant" someone they believe to be in the country unlawfully.
"We are told they will arrest only the most violent who commit crimes in our community," she said. "These parts of this document say otherwise."
She questioned Deputy Chief Victor Medico about details of the agreement and how they would affect the way local police do their jobs. The answer?
"We won't know until we go through the training."
Giraldo said that she was uncomfortable entering into such a vague agreement.
"This is not about following the law," she said.
Councilwoman Watson agreed.
"The reason I voted the way I voted was the lack of information," she said. "In the past racial profiling did exist. We have to get this thing cleared up before we enter into an agreement."
But in the end the council vote to approve the agreement was 7-0. City Attorney Grant Alley said guidance from Uthmeier made the vote mandatory.
The agreement mandates agreement from the state's 67 county sheriff's and any law enforcement agency with a detention facility, which Fort Myers does not have. He said the law calls for other agencies to use "best faith efforts" to assist ICE.
The Attorney General, he said, has advised that "best faith efforts" means cities must approve the agreement.
Asked flat-out whether the council was in violation of the law Alley, said "It's not very clear."
But the way to answer that question, he said, would be to write the AG and seek an opinion, he said. Though it is not formal, the city already has that opinion.
Residents remained unconvinced.
"Do we want a society where police arrest first and ask questions later?" asked Emanuella Casimir, a Fort Myers immigration attorney. "This policy undermines public safety by sowing fear and distrust. We're looking at racial profiling, wrongful detention and guilty until proven innocent."
Her remarks were repeated by passionate residents for almost two hours. As residents panned the agreement and praised the three women who opposed it, Mayor Kevin Andrson admonished them several times to stick to talking about the proposed agreement. A few times Anderson had the speakers' microphone turned off.
Residents called the law mandating the agreement "top-down bullying" from Tallahassee. Resident Daniel Becker talked about "jack-booted thugs" and "a bullying Legislature" shutting up "three people who had the audacity to question their authority."
Renata Bozzetto, deputy director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition said the agreement is not mandatory and is not about public safety.
"It's about terrifying an entire community," she said.
Will Mann, a legal fellow with the Community Justice Project, said he realized the council was under extraordinary pressure from the governor and the attorney general.
"At the end of the day entering into the agreement is a choice," he said. "It's a choice the governor wants you to make out of fear and panic."
In the end, the council followed Alley's advice, though Bonk and Giraldo both heaped criticism on his role. Both councilwomen said his silence before the first vote left them without knowledge that might have short-circuited the threats from the state and the death threats currently under investigation.
Bonk in fact referred to "significant dereliction of duty on the part of my City Attorney."
But when Councilman Fred Burson asked Alley flat-out for his opinion on whether council should approve the agreement Alley said they should.
The vote was unanimous.
This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Facing threats of investigation and removal - and even death - council reverses vote
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