TAMPA, FL — Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier sent a letter on Wednesday threatening Mayor Jane Castor, including potentially removing her from office, for “forcing sanctuary policies on the Tampa Police Department, which violates state law,” he posted to X, adding, “These [immigration] policies must be reversed immediately, or there will be consequences.”
In the letter, Uthmeier wrote, “Not only does state law clearly ban ‘sanctuary policies’ … [Florida law] requires state and local jurisdictions to ‘use best efforts to support the enforcement of federal immigration law.’” (Read the full letter below.)
Tampa police are violating state law by prohibiting officers from disclosing the immigration status of crime victims or witnesses to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the attorney general alleges.
“TPD ostensibly supports these policies because they do not want illegal aliens to be concerned with immigration consequences for cooperating with law enforcement,” Uthmeier wrote. “But we want illegal aliens to fear immigration consequences to the extent they are here unlawfully. These sorts of policies that flout our nation’s immigration laws positively contribute to the mass influx of illegal aliens that Florida has experienced.”
The attorney general also said that Tampa police policies “prohibit officers from engaging in ‘broad-based’ immigration enforcement actions. This ambiguous restriction on immigration enforcement activities is precisely the sort of conduct that Florida law prohibits and plainly fails the ‘best efforts’ test.”
Uthmeier told Castor, “You must do better.”
He gave the mayor a March 31 deadline to reverse “these unlawful policies.”
He wrote, “Failure to do so will risk the enforcement of all applicable civil penalties, including removal from office by the governor.”
Castor said in a statement released Wednesday that the city will review the attorney general’s concerns about police “policies and procedures to ensure that we use best efforts to support the enforcement of federal immigration law.”
The mayor added, “Tampa is one of the safest cities of our size in the nation because we built trust with our community through collaboration. The Tampa Police Department signed the 287(g) [agreement with ICE] and developed its immigration enforcement policy in consultation with partner agencies and law enforcement associations to ensure all immigration-related actions are carried out according to state and federal law.”
