Politics
Pinellas Schools won’t enforce ICE agreement school police chief signed without authorization
Pinellas County Schools are backing off from an agreement with the federal government to deputize school police for immigration enforcement efforts.
Luke Williams, chief of Pinellas County Schools Police, signed the agreement authorizing officers to question people’s immigration status and detain them for turnover to immigration enforcement officials, according to a statement a district spokesperson sent to Florida Phoenix Thursday morning.
However, the school board and superintendent didn’t authorize Williams to sign that agreement and didn’t know he had.
“The agreement is administrative in nature as it does not obligate the district to participate in training,” wrote Isabel Mascareñas, the school district’s public information officer. “Pinellas County Schools does not intend to nominate any member of the Schools Police department to attend the training program to perform the functions of an immigration officer through the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).”
ICE took the Pinellas school police off its list of agencies with a pending task force agreement on Thursday morning, a day after the Phoenix reported that the district would have been the first in the country to enact such an agreement.
A spokesperson for the Florida Department of Education directed questions to the county but confirmed the department has encouraged districts to enact task force model agreements with ICE if they believe it would benefit safety.
All the sheriffs in the state and several municipalities and state agencies have entered task force model agreements with ICE, which Gov. Ron DeSantis has described as the maximum level of collaboration with the federal government.
Guidance the district issued following the Trump administration’s reversal of a policy restricting immigration arrests at schools remains in place, Mascareñas said.
“As always, the goal is to maintain a safe learning environment for our students. Ultimately, law enforcement is the function of law enforcement agencies, and not of the schools or the District,” the Jan. 27 guidance from the district to school principals states.
The district recommended that principals contact the legal department if ICE or other immigration officials contact them and emphasized that schools can’t inquire about students’ immigration status. However, the guidance also instructs schools to cooperate with officials seeking access to students and contact the parents only if the officials allow it.
Jared Nordlund, Florida director for Latino civil rights group UnidosUS, found it concerning that the school board and superintendent hadn’t been informed that the police chief had signed the agreement with ICE.
“I’m now wondering if that’s going to happen across the state, I mean, that shouldn’t be happening at all. … All people involved in the school district, from managing down to teaching, should be involved in a plan,” he said in a phone interview with the Phoenix.
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Republished with permission from the Florida Phoenix. By Jackie Llanos, a recent graduate of the University of Richmond. She has interned at Nashville Public Radio, Virginia Public Media and Virginia Mercury.
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Yarborough’s bill has three committee stops before a full Senate hearing. Similar legislation has been filed in the House.
Sen. Clay Yarborough’s proposal for new requirements on teachers accused of crimes and the school districts that hire them is the fulfillment of a promise made last year.
SB 1374 would impose reporting requirements and mandate the removal of teachers accused of a wide variety of crimes detailed in Florida Statute. These include grooming behaviors.
Teachers and administrators would be required to self-report the accusations within 48 hours of arrest, and would also be compelled to report convictions and rulings for any offense except a minor traffic violation in the same timeframe.
Districts would have to remove the teachers from classrooms within 24 hours of the notification.
Yarborough was inspired to file this bill by a series of incidents in his native Jacksonville, where the Douglas Anderson School of the Arts had a number of teachers who flouted laws and community standards.
In a letter last year to Acting Superintendent Dana Krisnar, the School Board and Jacksonville General Counsel Michael Fackler, he expressed “serious concerns about the immediate safety” of students at Douglas Anderson in the wake of an arrest of a teacher over a “sexual incident” covered in the local press.
“The fact that the district was aware of this and allowed the teacher to remain in direct proximity with students and chose not to inform parents until last week is beyond comprehension,” Yarborough wrote.
This legislative proposal is an attempt to get state guardrails on a situation neglected by locals.
The bill notes that the “self-report is not considered an admission of guilt and is not admissible for any purpose in any proceeding, civil or criminal, administrative or judicial, investigatory or adjudicatory.” So it’s not a presumption of guilt. But it’s a recognition of the gravity of the charges.
Yarborough’s bill has three committee stops before a full Senate hearing. Similar legislation has been filed in the House.
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A Jacksonville Republican member of the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Caucus says he and his constituents want to know more about what’s being cut amid the Elon Musk group’s breakneck pace.
“I have constituents sort of concerned about the cuts as well. But I think part of what’s going on is DOGE is moving so fast that it’s got people’s heads spinning,” said Rep. John Rutherford. “In fact, I want more information about what’s going to happen before it happens. They’re moving so fast.
Rutherford is among the Congressional Republicans who have resisted calls to hold town halls, saying they present “an opportunity for a mob to act out in front of media.” So his constituent concerns are coming from smaller group settings.
Yet it’s notable that his comments, made Friday on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal,” stop short of previous full-throated endorsements of the DOGE mission.
“Musk is not acting on his own, nor does he have complete authority over anything, including the Department of Government Efficiency. Musk is carrying out the orders given to him from President Donald Trump to clean up the waste, fraud, and abuse that have plagued the federal government for far too long,” Rutherford said last month.
During the same C-SPAN hit Friday, Rutherford acknowledged that Trump has the ultimate authority to cut executive branch functions, and defended those moves to reduce “bloat” in the government, particularly given that previous President Joe Biden hired people in what the Congressman called a “willy-nilly” way.
“He has the duty and the power … and the responsibility,” he argued.
As First Coast News reports, DOGE cuts look likely to impact Rutherford’s district with some notable cuts.
The Charles E. Bennett Federal Building, which is considered an “anchor institution” by Downtown Vision, was listed among 440 structures that could be sold. Internal Revenue Service, Department of Labor, and Housing and Urban Development functions are among those that could be removed from the city as a result.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Jacksonville District is also vacating its offices on the Southbank.
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