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The email from the detective seemed encouraging. For months, Daniela had been waiting for him to finish an investigation into her former employer, whom she had reported for insurance fraud.
Daniela had answered dozens of questions and emails, and sent him documentation. “It was a pleasure to have spoken with you,” the detective from the Florida Department of Financial Services wrote after their first meeting in January. He’d promised to send the case to prosecutors for consideration. In April, he emailed again, asking her to meet.
Originally from Colombia, Daniela came to the United States on a work permit and is married to a U.S. citizen. She has a pending green card application and has asked to be identified only by her first name for fear of repercussions that could affect her ongoing immigration case.
Daniela went to the appointment with the detective. But the resolution was not what she expected. Shortly after sitting down in his office, Daniela said, she was detained, handcuffed, and taken to jail and then to immigrant detention. Records show she has no criminal record.
“It’s very cruel the way they arrested me,” Daniela said. Neither the detective nor the Department of Financial Services responded to questions from The Marshall Project.
Daniela’s arrest reflects the unprecedented growth of the Trump administration’s 287(g) Task Force program, a contractual agreement between local law enforcement agencies and the Department of Homeland Security that allows local officers to enforce some federal immigration laws. During the Obama administration, the program was suspended over civil rights concerns. In President Donald Trump’s second term, there has been enormous expansion, with the number of local officers deputized to make immigration arrests now estimated to outnumber the roughly 12,000 new ICE agents hired since January 2025.
More than 1,300 law enforcement agencies in 32 states and two U.S. territories have signed on, racking up immigration arrests, and in some cases undermining public safety in the process, experts and immigrant advocates say. As The Marshall Project reported earlier this year, local police officers and deputies have arrested crime victims and people who called 911 for help, including a woman who reported a theft and a father who called for a welfare check on his young daughter. As a result, fear of immigration detention has led many people to avoid calling the local police for assistance or to report crime. And now law enforcement agencies that do not perform traditional public safety functions are answering Trump’s call.
In Louisiana and Florida, wildlife protection and alcohol and tobacco control agencies have signed agreements.
But Florida in particular stands out for the sheer number of nontraditional law enforcement agencies participating in the Task Force program. At least 17 colleges and universities in the state have agreements with ICE, in addition to a host of state agencies, including the Department of Environmental Protection, the Department of Lottery Services and the criminal investigations division of the Department of Financial Services, the main function of which is to investigate arson, the misuse of state funds and fraud. This small collection of Florida agencies alone has logged more than 800 immigration stops and arrests since August 2025, according to state data. People have been detained while fishing or riding on a bus to work.
While the agreements have repeatedly led to the detention of alleged crime victims, Daniela’s arrest by a 287(g) officer is peculiar in that it appears to have sidelined an open investigation. The Department of Financial Services did not provide documents in response to numerous records requests. It’s not clear how the fraud investigation that began with Daniela’s tip was resolved, whether other probes may have been affected by similar immigration arrests or how many other detectives with the agency are deputized to detain immigrants.
Following her detention, Daniela said she was placed in handcuffs, shuttled to the Palm Beach County jail and eventually sent, in chains, to ICE facilities in two different states before being released on bond in May. She said she has filed complaints with the Department of Financial Services and requested records of her arrest, but she has yet to receive them.
She is still shocked, she said, that she trusted law enforcement for help, and instead was treated like a criminal.
“A crime happened,” she said. “But it was a crime to an immigrant.”
