Blaise Ingoglia distributes $1.8M to Northwest Florida agencies for immigration enforcement

For the second time in as many months, Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia announced $1.8 million in funding will be allocated to a region of the state to help pay for immigration enforcement.

In a Tallahassee news conference, Ingoglia said the money is being drawn from the State Board of Immigration Enforcement. The agencies receiving the funds include Sheriff’s Offices from Leon, Franklin, Suwannee and Jefferson counties. The Chattahoochee Police Department is also getting a cut of the immigration enforcement funding, which will go toward training officers.

“Every town now is a border town,” Ingoglia said. “It’s going to take all hands on deck to fix it. The high cost of illegal immigration is far too high.”

The amount of funding going to the Sheriff’s Offices largely in Northwest Florida include $991,279 steered to Taylor County, $499,523 earmarked for Leon County, $212,376 for Suwanee County and $130,660 to Jefferson County. Another $30,440 is slated for the Chattahoochee police.

Sen. Jonathan Martin, a Fort Myers Republican and Chair of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, was on hand at the news conference as well. He said immigration has been costly for the Sunshine State and additional help in enforcement has been needed for years. Martin said immigrants entering the county illegally have increased human trafficking, drug trafficking and sex trafficking in Florida for far too long.

“They buy and they sell under the cover of darkness,” Martin said. “By doing this (immigration enforcement funding) we are cleaning up our streets.”

The funding will be used for online and in-person training for the law enforcement personnel. Taylor County Sheriff Wayne Padgett said immigration enforcement is no longer the domain of just federal enforcement.

“Illegal immigration is a problem for every county in the state of Florida,” Padgett said.

Leon County Sheriff Walter McNeil agreed and said much of the illegal drug trade in Florida is being funneled into the state by immigrants who first go through Georgia.

“Drugs are brought in through Mexico to Georgia and into Florida. We’re doing everything we possibly can to eradicate them,” McNeil said. “We all have to come together to address these issues.”

In October, Ingoglia distributed the same amount of funding to five Northeast Florida law enforcement agencies for immigration enforcement. The local Sheriff’s Offices that received shares of that money included Bradford, St. Johns, Clay and Putnam counties, along with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.