“State Mandate” or “Spineless”? City and GPD Officials Dispute GINI’s Stance Against Reporting Suspected Undocumented Immigrants
On Thursday, September 17, activists organized by the Gainesville Immigrant Neighbor Inclusion Initiative (GINI) held a protest outside City Hall over the Gainesville Police Department (GPD)’s new general order requiring officers to report suspected undocumented immigrants. The demonstration occurred at noon and many protesters spoke during public comment at 1:00.
Last month, GPD formally established General Order 82.4 which requires officers to report individuals they suspect of being in the U.S. illegally to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE).
The general order further instructs GPD officers to contact a designated immigration officer with the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office if they find an individual has a warrant from ICE or any other federal law enforcement agency.
GnvInfo spoke with Hispanic Democrats of Gainesville member Jim Sulivan while he protested outside and he said the city government needs to “grow a spine.” “Hold onto your jobs and compromise the lives of innocent people,” he said. “People just wanna hold onto their jobs; I think that’s just spineless.”
GINI member/Florida Immigrant Coalition Representative Leah Cohen told GnvInfo that everyday she hears about families “who’ve been ripped apart by this insidious… toxic, traumatizing immigration system across the state… Gainesville is no different.”
Cohen said that the state government is effectively delegating deportation-related operations to police departments funded by local taxpayers. “It’s immigration apparatus,” she said. “Particularly [General Order 82.4] is so dangerous because it gives an open season on anyone police officers come in contact with whether they be victims… witnesses… someone just asking for help… They have to fill out a form and it’s 47 questions long—-let’s just be clear. It’s a very detailed form that’s using their time and energy and our resources to report [them] to the state.”
Later during public comment, Cohen emphasized that the form includes license plate information. The primary method of arrest for undocumented immigrants in Florida is through traffic stops by the Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) and other ICE-deputized law enforcement agencies.
GINI organizer Ethan Maia de Needell presented survey results conducted with 87 immigrants in Alachua County.
A significant percentage of people who took the survey feel that ICE, racism, language barriers and a lack of information on events and resources are reasons they don’t feel safe or included in the community.
72% do not feel comfortable calling the police for help.
79% do not feel they can trust the local government to defend immigrants’ interests.
81% do not feel safe when they see law enforcement.
82% do not feel knowledgeable on resources the local government provides.
89% do not feel heard by the local government.
Mayor Harvey Ward was absent for some of the public comment, stating he had to go to the GPD station for a city-related responsibility.
Maia de Needell quoted two city leaders to begin his public comment:
Police Chief Nelson Moya:
“We cannot operate in any government, local, state, or federal without ensuring that our people feel safe.”
“Our responsibility is to be good stewards of the community we serve and above all to maintain the public’s trust.”
Mayor Harvey Ward:
“There’s not a damn thing we can do here about [the detainment of Gainesville High student Sebastian Jimenez] procedurally. This is above our pay grade here at the City of Gainesville… This is about right and wrong. This is about the soul of America.”
“We are calling on our city leaders to follow their own words and cancel the horrible General Order 82.4,” said Maia de Needell. “This order goes beyond any state statute or laws on the record. It orders all officers to file an extensive report on anyone suspected of being undocumented, including victims and witnesses, directly to our state’s immigration enforcement board. This order ties GPD and our city directly with ICE, and our leaders have the power to cancel it. This is in your pay grade. Not doing so is putting our community at large regardless of immigration status at greater risk. Not doing so tells our immigrant neighbors they are expendable. Not doing so ignores the evidence that tying local law enforcement agencies with immigration enforcement makes our entire community less safe. Not doing so would be just another contradiction to Gainesville's claims of being a welcoming city. I have shared with commissioners some of the results of our survey of nearly 100 immigrant neighbors. Even before this order was passed, you can see how our foreign-born neighbors do not feel seen, included, or safe. Why are we going out of our way to damage that community even further? Let's be clear, GPD’s intentions behind this policy do not matter. The fact that GPD is reporting on our neighbors is in no way benign. It is being complicit with ICE terror and inviting them directly into our community to kidnap our neighbors."
Head of the Immigration Justice Ministry at Holy Trinity Church, Jennifer Rich, said the policy equates to racial profiling. She said it erodes public trust in GPD and makes immigrant victims and witnesses reluctant to report crimes, including in cases of domestic violence.
Rural Women’s Health Project Director Veronica Robleto, who has spent decades working with immigrant survivors in cases of domestic violence and human trafficking, told the commissioners that there isn’t a specific identification on what qualifies as "suspicion.”
According to the general order, “personal characteristics” can be considered if “credible, reliable, locally relevant, temporally specific information that links a person of specific description to particular criminal incidents and is combined with other identifying information.” It says that “limited English proficiency” can be considered if combined with other factors such as fleeing. Robleto said the policy is causing so much fear that it will result in people running from the police and not calling police.
“It is a historic strategy that people who cause harm, even those who were undocumented themselves, will do [so] by threatening to call ICE on victims,” said Robleto. She said GPD is now doing harmful individual’s jobs for them and quoted Tess Helgran, an attorney from the National Immigration Project who said the establishment of the policy is not required by law.
Gainesville resident Caitlin Caddel said, “If the city commission does not direct the cancellation of this new Show Me Your Papers policy, you can no longer act as if your hands are clean. You are complicit in the ICE-FHP kidnapping apparatus. That is wrong. Each of you, along with GPD officers, have entered into a pact against all immigrants. End the policy. Come out against it, urge the city manager. This is a heinous policy that creates fear and trauma. It must be cancelled. The city commission elected to serve and is paid with the taxes of immigrants… The only justification so far for the Show Me Your Papers order has been this reference to the state statute, 908.1031, which in no way requires a vast and indiscriminate data collection that GPD now requires of all of its officers. The only relevant language in that statute, which was explicitly written to help facilitate ICE’s mass deportation goals, is the call for local law enforcement agencies to quote ‘collect data related to operations with ICE from local law enforcement agencies...’ That's all it says. This GPD order is a vast overreach and uses our local tax dollars to assist ICE; more effectively kidnap our neighbors, and it must be cancelled today.”
University of Florida student Marcus Branker said, “You may believe that ignoring this policy protects you and the people of Gainesville, hoping that by sacrificing our immigrant community we prevent future additional scrutiny from the state. I believe you’d be wrong. Putting any one group in the crosshairs of this fascist administration puts everyone at risk. Do you think that mass surveillance and overpolicing will stop with undocumented immigrants? This has already been proven wrong by Alex Predi, Renne Good and Mahmoud Khalil: Citizens and green card holders illegally murdered and kidnapped by [ICE]. If you are willing to throw our immigrant friends and neighbors under the bus, who wouldn’t you betray just to satiate Ron DeSantis.”
Badass Feminists Gainesville member and (former) Professor Maggie McDonald said, “Right before standing here, I was holding a sign depicting a young man… A young man who was effectively murdered by ICE. He had just begun classes at my university where I taught for 25 years…”
“ICE became personal,” she said. “ICE will probably never become personal for the Gainesville police. The undocumented will just be numbers. But future history will ask who stood up to ICE—[also known as] America’s Gestapo. You may respond, ‘I was just following orders.’ I'd like to point out… that response didn't sit well the last time it was proffered.”
Gainesville resident Lisa Neville said, “GPD’s existing immigration policy says that the department provides police services regardless of citizenship or immigration status. I would like the commission to ask how those two policies work together in practice. First, what happens when the person encountering GPD is a victim or witness?.. Residents need a clear answer before an emergency, not after one. Second, what establishes reasonable suspicion of unauthorized immigration status?.. The public should understand the objective criteria officers are being trained to use. Third, what happens when that determination is wrong?.. Has it already been shared outside of GPD and is the person ever told what’s happened with their information? Fourth, I would ask the commission to establish clearly what is required by state law and what you believe represents a local implementation decision… Critics of the policy dispute how much of this particular procedure state law actually requires. The public should not have to resolve that legal question by itself. Please ask staff to identify which provisions are mandatory and where Gainesville retains discretion. This isn't an abstract concern for me. Recently, two unidentified men in an unmarked vehicle came onto my driveway, parked in front of my car, and questioned me about whether or not I spoke Spanish. They questioned my two sons. They asked me to point out which houses on my street spoke Spanish. They had no badges, they didn't identify who they were, they had no warrant, they had no body cameras.”
City Manager Andrew Pearsons was not present at the meeting but he appeared virtually to speak in defense of the policy, concurring that reporting suspected undocumented immigrants is a legal requirement.
Assistant Police Chief Efrain Torres said the general order was implemented to adhere to state policy and that they took “very careful precautions” to make sure what they do is “very controlled.” He said that Major Jamie Kurnick is the only officer who can approve reports submitted by officers.
Torres argued that GPD won’t use factors like the Hispanic last name or physical features as reasonable suspicion. He said that GPD’s goal is to “protect the community” and “serve.” He said they won’t ask crime victims about their legal status if they have a Hispanic last name.
Torres said that GPD “purposely” did not sign the 287(g) agreement to work with ICE, backtracking from the department’s prior stance that they had to sign it. Torres called 287(g) a “more restrictive policy.”
Kurnick said they vet state mandates through the legal department and that it’s “very difficult to talk about every circumstance that there is with reasonable suspicion.”
Kurnick stated, “We have instructed our officers that our mission has stayed the same and that if you come across someone that for some reason you develop reasonable suspicion to determine that they are not a person that is documented, or as FDLE has named this form a ‘suspected unauthorized alien,’ that we by state statute, through the code of administration… have to report this information to the state. I heard 47 questions on that form. That's not our form. That’s the state form. That form is provided to every law enforcement agency in the state that has to be completed. It has to be completed by the end of the day by the officer that does have to do it... We have a monthly report that we have to submit to FDLE… We do not have the ability to discriminate against which laws we enforce and which mandates that we do and do not do as a law enforcement agency in the State of Florida. This is a state mandate.”
Kurnick claimed that GPD doesn’t intend to have the policy separate them from the community, purporting that GPD has always been a “community policing agency.”
“We are the ones that would come to the community—tell them what’s happening—why it’s happening and push that forward,” claimed Kurnick. “With 287(g) we were very intentional, we have not signed that agreement. If you sign that agreement it gives you enforcement authority on behalf of ICE. Meaning we can make arrests. GPD officers cannot make arrests. We did not sign the 287(g) and that is not our intention. Our intention is to protect the victims within our community… Sometimes things come down and we have to report them but we are very intentional in how we do that.”
Kurnick said that officers are not allowed to discriminate against others, claiming they’ll be “swiftly reprimanded if not terminated” if they act in said manner. She claimed that protocol was “long-standing” and that they do not “tolerate that.”
In 2021, Edward Ratliff sued the city after serving on the K-9 unit and reportedly experiencing racism from other officers. The lawsuit said employees had no fear of "disciplinary action" for using racial slurs. Numerous officers with the GPD K-9 unit engaged in racist and nazi-esque behavior, such as Sgt. Charles Owens doing a Hitler-salute, the complaint said.
Another officer assigned with leading others, Sgt. Jeffrey Kerkau, allegedly said there were n-words "in the wood pile" to describe a minority officer being subject to internal investigation.
Disclaimer: The Following Images are Taken Directly from the Lawsuit and Contain Racially Offensive and Disturbing Language to Include the N-Word:
Kurnick indicated that the “initiative” behind General Order 82.4 has been going on for "many months" but that reporting was low, then stating there have been just two reports since it started. She said the reports weren’t “proactive” but after they “responded to something.”
Clip from City Commission Meeting (City of Gainesville)
According to a GPD arrest report, on July 23, prior to the official imposition of the general order, GPD Ofc. Larry Prunty conducted a traffic stop on Argelio Enrique Roble for allegedly failing to use his turn signals. Prunty reported that his patrol lights were activated and that he was accompanied by a Spanish speaking officer who gave commands over the intercom to stop. Roble, a passenger (not driver), ran away and officers caught up with him. Prunty reported that Roble is “not a U.S. citizen so he was transported to [jail] where he was fingerprinted for identification.” Roble was later granted a withheld adjudication for a count of resisting an officer without violence. Judge Adam Lee imposed no sentence of further incarceration or probation but Roble was still booked for an ICE hold.
GnvInfo emailed Kurnick for a response, and GPD Public Information Officer Art Forgey replied to the inquiry:
Statement from GPD:
“The arrest [of Roble] did not trigger any reporting by the Gainesville Police Department to any other agency. Based on the information available, I suspect the Alachua County Jail may have reported Mr. Roble to federal authorities. It has been the jail's policy for many years to report individuals born in a foreign country to immigration authorities when they are booked into the facility.
The Gainesville Police Department did not report Mr. Roble to any outside agency.
Since the implementation of the state-mandated reporting requirement that led to the adoption of General Order 82.4, GPD has submitted two referrals to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE).
The Gainesville Police Department does not tolerate racism. I would encourage you to review the findings of the internal investigation and its outcome, as well as the disposition of the suit, which address the concerns raised.”
The lawsuit was dismissed in its original form and resolved out of trial after Ratliff’s attorney amended the civil charges, court records show. According to an Alachua Chronicle article released after the racial abuse allegations were dismissed, "Judge Winsor ruled that Ratliff did not experience a hostile work environment because the standard requires that the treatment be 'both subjectively and objectively severe or pervasive.' In addition, many of the examples provided by Ratliff occurred away from work when he was voluntarily around his off-duty colleagues. The judge wrote... 'The use of racist language–while inexcusable–occurred a handful of times over Ratliff’s thirteen years with GPD. These infrequent occurrences almost all occurred at off-duty social events… And the language was not directly threatening or humiliating to him. Even though some was extreme, this does not make up for its infrequency...' Ratliff’s attorney Alfred Truesdell told Alachua Chronicle that he was disappointed in the judge’s ruling because he believed the 'racist comments described in the complaint provided enough evidence to show that there is an atmosphere of racism at GPD and in the K-9 unit...'"
GnvInfo requested a copy of any internal investigations relating to the case, but GPD hasn’t provided any files. Forgey was not responsive when asked further questions about the case and the exact current employment position of the involved officers has not been confirmed.
Forgey did respond when asked about the exact date of the “implementation” of the practices in General Order 82.4, stating:
“February 13, 2025 (Senate Bill 2-C / Chapter 2025-1): Governor Ron DeSantis signed Senate Bill 2-C, which created the State Board of Immigration Enforcement within the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE). This legislation expanded data collection mandates, requiring local law enforcement agencies to compile and submit data regarding interactions with suspected unauthorized aliens to FDLE.
April 2025 (Resolution #25-002): The State Immigration Enforcement Council and FDLE established the formal monthly reporting protocols for local agencies to document and transmit contact details regarding suspected unauthorized alien encounters to FDLE.”
After Kurnick spoke to commissioners, Ward commented on people around the room recording, stating they can while taking a dissuading tone since meetings are recorded and posted online.
Commissioner James Ingle said the militarization of ICE has caused a lot of damage in the U.S.
Ingle acknowledged ICE terrorizing families and their arrest of local high school football player Sebestian Jimenez.
Ingle said that people he knows who had legal status were still arrested by ICE. He said ICE has greatly interfered with “local law enforcement being able to legitimately do their jobs and build trust in the community.”
Ingle asked Pearsons to “set a very deep briefing” on the general order and look at the FDLE rules and administrative code. “I want to take a look at what this is actually doing and hear the other side of this but if there is any way to change this and make sure people are being treated the way they should be I think that is of paramount importance,” he said.
“I want to remind everyone that what comes out of Tallahassee is changeable in a couple months,” remarked Ward as he transitioned to call the next commissioner with their speaking-light on.
Commissioner Bryan Eastman asked GPD if there was any protections for victims/witnesses.
Torres replied, “When we talk about reasonable suspicion... An officer is going out because some type of crime has been committed and he's going to encounter someone probably that violated the law… Part of that reasonable suspicion is once they're investigating that, if it leads them to believe [the] person that they're dealing with is an undocumented immigrant then they can ask the questions. If a person calls to say somebody broke into my car, that's not reasonable suspicion to inquire about their immigration status. We are going to that house as a victim… ask the questions to help them get the answers they need, have a detective assigned, work the case no different than any other citizen in the City of Gainesville.”
Eastman asked if reasonable suspicion would mean the "potential perpetrator of a crime."
Kurnick appeared to nod her head as Torres said “right” and gave an example of an officer pulling over a man without a license. “That would be reasonable suspicion for the officer to inquire about why that person doesn’t have a valid driver’s license,” he said.
Clip from City Commission Meeting (City of Gainesville)
Eastman asked if reasonable suspicion was laid out in the general order and Kurnick said it’s part of standard police training. Kurnick indicated that if someone admits they're undocumented it would be a "caveat.”
“We are not gonna do this all afternoon by the way ya’ll,” said Ward in an annoyed tone. “There’s going to become a point where we move on to the rest of the agenda.” Soon after, the commission did just that and moved on to other city-related matters.
