Area activists want Trust Act passed

As Orlando commissioners settled in for a City Council meeting last week, a crowd of activists filtered into the chambers, many clad in red “Unite Here!” T-shirts and one toting a snare drum.

Curtis Hierro, organizing director at Central Florida AFL-CIO, led them in several rounds of protest songs, until Mayor Buddy Dyer called the meeting to order.

“Mama, mama can’t you see what the city’s done to me?” he sang. “They keep trying to hold us down. Now we’re marching into town.”

The activists were part of the Trust Orlando Coalition, which is pushing for the city to pass what they call the Trust Act to limit cooperation between Orlando’s police force and federal immigration authorities, similar to how “sanctuary cities” operate.

“It is doable,” said Rasha Muba-

rak, Orlando coordinator for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, one of the dozens of groups supporting the measure. “We’ve seen it done in cities across the country. We’re asking all of Orlando to have that courage.”

Orlando leaders say the coalition is preaching to the converted. Deputy City Attorney Jody Litchford said Orlando police are “not involved in immigration enforcement at any level, in any way.”

“The undocumented community has nothing to fear from the Orlando Police Department, and we want to make sure that we have good, informative, cooperative relationships,” she said.

The debate comes as the Florida Legislature is again set to consider a ban on sanctuary policies in 2018, which would fine governments with them up to $5,000 per day and could lead to elected officials who don’t comply being removed from office.

Many local governments across the U.S., though few in Florida, have sanctuary policies, which generally prevent local police from holding people based on their immigration status or from volunteering information to federal immigration agents.

The proposed Orlando Trust Act would bar police from asking suspects about their immigration status, unless required by law, holding them for Immigration and Customs Enforcement or handing them over to federal agents without warrants.

During last Monday’s meeting, Karen Caudillo, a University of Central Florida doctoral student in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, tearfully described the fear of deportation she said looms over undocumented immigrants every day.

“Our lives are in your hands,” she told the City Council. “If you guys don’t find it fit to help us in our time of need, it would be a shame to see you on the wrong side of history.”

President Donald Trump recently ordered a gradual end to DACA, which protected undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children from deportation. Efforts in Congress to revive the program have stalled.

Dyer and Commissioner Patty Sheehan at times bristled at the activists’ criticism. Dyer said there was “not a single action” the city could take that would affect DACA participants and accused the coalition of attacking “the good guys.”

Mubarak insisted that’s not the case.

“The intensity comes from urgency,” she said. “It comes from despair. It’s definitely not from a place of anger or an attack on anyone.”

City leaders say they would support a resolution affirming the council’s support for Orlando’s already-existing “bias-free policing” policy, which bars discrimination based on immigration status.

However, the coalition wants an ordinance, the city’s equivalent of a law. Their rallying cry has become “a resolution is not a solution.”

“A resolution or a policy has no teeth,” Mubarak said. “It basically says what we shouldn’t do, versus an ordinance that is a law and that says what legally law enforcement can or cannot do.”

Litchford said an ordinance is wrong — in Orlando, ordinances govern citizens, while policies govern employees — but also because the city could risk losing federal grant funding if it adopts a ban on cooperating with ICE agents.

She noted the city does not run a jail, which is where federal detention of people arrested by local authorities typically occurs.

Not all so-called sanctuary cities have taken the same approach.

San Francisco and Chicago passed ordinances, while New Orleans adopted an administrative policy. West Palm Beach, considered Florida’s only sanctuary city by the Center for Immigration Studies, adopted a “Welcoming City” resolution in March.

The Trump administration has threatened to withhold federal funds from sanctuary governments, and last week sent warning letters to 29 jurisdictions — including West Palm Beach — that it said were potentially “out of compliance” with federal law governing grants.

However, sanctuary cities also scored a victory last week. A judge in a preliminary order blocked the Justice Department from withholding funding from Philadelphia over its policies, following similar rulings in San Francisco and Chicago.