A key staffer for Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan is leaving city government this month.
Yanira Cardona will be taking a role with the Phoenix Arts Innovation District, wrapping a tenure as the city’s Hispanic Outreach Coordinator in which she stoked statewide controversy by going on social media and telling people where immigration enforcement was happening from her office at City Hall.
Put on administrative leave briefly, she was reinstated, which appears to have afforded her time to effectuate her exit.
Deegan said back in January that General Counsel Michael Fackler said Cardona’s comments, put on Instagram during business hours and apparently broadcast live from City Hall, were legal. That runs counter to the interpretation by Attorney General James Uthmeier, who said “this is illegal and needs to be seriously addressed!”
“ICE is out and about,” Cardona said in the video. “They are doing speed traps. They are, they’ve been seen on Emerson, on Beach Boulevard, on Atlantic and on the highway. They are targeting, literally, they’re targeting any lawn care companies, any AC company construction vans. They’re literally stopping them just to make sure that they have their paperwork.”
Deegan said back then Cardona was speaking out of “compassion” to address “an immigrant population that is hurting” because of immigration enforcement,” and expressed frustration that she had to respond with an “inordinate amount of energy” and provide “grist for the political mill” because Cardona’s comments were used as a “political whipping post.”
