Immigrants without legal status in Jacksonville could soon face mandatory 60-day local jail sentences under an ordinance the city council approved Tuesday night.
The bill also directs $76,250 in unused Economic Development Grant fund money for the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office to add more fingerprint scanners to the 150 already deployed.
Council Vice President Kevin Carrico, who introduced the bill, says officers would use the scanners in the field to check the immigration status of someone suspected of committing a crime.
The council passed the measure 12-5 despite backlash from members of Jacksonville’s immigrant communities and allies. Efforts by opponents to introduce substitute legislation failed Tuesday.
Those proposals, by council members Michael Boylan and Rahman Johnson, would have kept funding for the fingerprint scanners but stripped out the mandatory jail time as well as demands for support from all city departments.
Carrico said those efforts would gut the bill.
Council member Ken Amaro, who voted in favor of the bill, said he worried the ordinance could get tied up in litigation and prevent the sheriff’s office from receiving the finger printing equipment.
The city’s general counsel told council members last week that pending federal litigation over local immigration enforcement could make the ordinance unenforceable.
Johnson said he wants the sheriff’s office to have the equipment it needs to enforce state immigration law but that the bill “turns fear into policy.”
“If you’re telling me I don’t vote for this bill that I don’t support the police, you don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m supporting our law enforcement and fire and our first responders. But I do not support using this council, using this dais as a bully pulpit for national issues,” Johnson said.
Boylan argued that supporters of the bill on council were not being consistent with previous positions on local legislation that duplicates state and national law.
Council member Rory Diamond argued the bill supports the wishes of Duval County voters who elected President Donald Trump.
“I promise you, the vast majority of the people of Jacksonville support this effort,” Diamond said. “They are against illegal immigration, they are against rewarding it and they are against spending our money on it, and they want to make sure the citizens in Jacksonville are safe.”
Council member Jimmy Peluso, who has been a lead opponent to the local immigration legislation, was absent Tuesday on military duty, he told Jacksonville Today. Peluso is in the U.S. Navy Reserves.
Council member Reggie Gaffney Jr. was also absent.
A second Immigration bill introduced by Diamond, which aims to audit city agencies that award grants and prevent that funding from benefitting immigrants in the country illegally, is scheduled to be debated in council committees next week.
