President Donald Trump’s favored candidate for Florida governor said Orange County should end any opposition to a planned ICE processing center in Orlando.
U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Naples, personally visited the southeast Orlando warehouse this week, saying in a Friday interview he was nearby on other business and wanted to get a look at the facility toured by an ICE official two weeks prior.
Records obtained by the Orlando Sentinel indicate the cost of the facility would be nearly $100 million.
Donalds also used the opportunity to jab at Democratic gubernatorial rivals David Jolly and, particularly, Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings.
“I think if this is what ICE needs to fulfill their mission under federal law, then the state of Florida needs to be supportive of that,” he said. “It makes no sense to me why Jerry Demings would be opposed to it.”
Earlier this week at a Board of County Commissioners meeting, Demings told advocates who urged the county to move to block such a facility that “we will do what is necessary to protect our community. We will explore what our lawful options are.”
Commissioner Nicole Wilson has proposed a moratorium on such facilities, similar to a Kansas City, Mo. ordinance passed this month to block a proposed site there, though state law may override such local bans.
Orlando’s city attorney Mayanne Downs wrote to Mayor Buddy Dyer and city commissioners that the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution prevents the city from blocking it.
“As an agency of our federal government, ICE is immune from any local regulation that interferes in any way with its federal mandate,” she wrote.
Jolly, a former GOP congressman who left the party and became a Democrat last year, wrote on X, “Expanding detention facilities in Orlando won’t make the community safer, just more fearful.”
The 439,000-square-foot warehouse is within the city limits of Orlando and is just south of State Road 528, off of the SunBridge Parkway exit. A “For Lease” sign was still posted outside of the building on Friday, though parking lot access is blocked off with a barricade.
Donalds, among the closest members of Congress to the Trump administration, said he hadn’t heard if ICE had made any decisions yet about the facility.
“A lot of county jails in our state are full and overflowing, and that’s not in the best interest of public safety and the best interest of our state,” Donalds said.
Bloomberg reported Thursday that ICE had begun buying warehouses across the country as part of its effort to substantially ramp up its detention capacity. It reported the Trump Administration paid $102 million for a warehouse in Maryland and the following week paid $70 million for one in Arizona. Another in El Paso was purchased for $172 million.
The news outlet reported those price tags represent just the purchasing cost, and still would require further build out.
Those dollar figures and locations match records obtained by the Orlando Sentinel, which showed the Orlando warehouse on ICE’s radar in November.
