Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd addressed immigration enforcement and cooperation with federal authorities during an exchange with a reporter, arguing that local and state resistance to Immigration and Customs Enforcement is driving increased federal activity and escalating tensions in major cities.
The exchange began when a reporter asked about how undocumented immigrants are handled in Polk County.
“Undocumented immigrants happen to be transferred to ICE?” the reporter asked.
Judd responded by rejecting the terminology and explaining his approach to immigration enforcement.
“Well, I don’t call them undocumented immigrants. I call them illegal immigrants because that’s what they are,” Judd said.
“The reason they’re not documented is they’re not legal. Okay? They’re illegal immigrants.”
Judd said the majority of illegal immigrants detained by his office this year had criminal charges, while the remainder were associated with those charged.
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“74% of the illegal immigrants that we’ve detained have have had criminal charges against them, okay, the other 26% were riding with them,” Judd said.
“Okay? So when we stop a car, we run a warrants check on everybody in the car. When you when there is a call for service, we run a warrants check on the victim, the suspect, and all the witnesses.”
He explained how law enforcement categorizes those additional individuals.
“Okay, we call that that 26% collateral, but three out of four of them, three out of four of them, have committed another criminal charge,” Judd said.
“Now think about that for a second. They couldn’t commit that crime if they weren’t here, but they did.”
Judd said those crimes result in additional costs for taxpayers.
“So now you’re having to take your taxpayer money and my taxpayer money and pay for the prosecution of those folks, pay for the public defender that defends them, pay for the jail and the prison sentence, depending on what the charges are,” he said.
He reiterated the breakdown of arrests made in his jurisdiction.
“And the and the majority of the 26% that was left out of this,” Judd said.
“You know, 74% of them had criminal charges. They were what we call collaterals, and most of them were with the person committing the crime.”
Judd provided a total number for arrests made this year.
“So, how many illegal immigrants have we arrested this year?” he said. “We’ve arrested 557 that have criminal charges as well as they’re here illegally. That’s that’s just this year.”
Judd then shifted his focus to what he described as the root cause of increased ICE operations in cities like Minneapolis and Los Angeles.
“But here’s the thing that and let me focus on this,” Judd said.
“The reason that you see ICE flooding into Minnesota and Minneapolis and into Los Angeles, into the be it these big cities, is because they refuse to turn over the illegal immigrants who are being arrested by the local police department where there’s outstanding ICE warrants.”
He said cooperation at the jail level could reduce the need for large-scale ICE deployments.
“If they would have simply instead of fighting back and pushing back against the federal government, instead of instead of violating the federal law, which is what the these leaders have done there,” Judd said.
“If they just said, Look, ICE, we don’t want our police, like, you know, actively engaged in ICE enforcement, but you can come in our jails, and as we make arrests, you can go through your evaluation process and remove those criminals that are committing crime against the citizens of The United States and against each other.”
Judd argued that refusal to cooperate forces ICE to operate independently and increases risk to agents.
“Well, you can remove them, then they wouldn’t be flooding these big blue areas with all of these ICE agents,” he said.
“So it’s the policy and the laws that the California and the Illinois and the Minnesota and the Oregon’s and the Portland’s in the city, it’s the laws that they’ve passed that’s created the environment for ICE to have to go in there and do it all on their own, and it puts the ICE agents at additional risk.”
He contrasted those policies with Florida’s approach.
“All of this could have been avoided,” Judd said.
“You don’t see that happening in Florida. You don’t see ICE send in 1000 people down here to go into Miami or Jacksonville or Tampa or Orlando or our big metro areas.”
He said cooperation is the key difference.
“You know why? Because we’re cooperating,” Judd said.
“And this same environment could be in every one of those states, if the state had cooperated.”
Judd concluded by criticizing elected officials who oppose federal law enforcement.
“That’s why you’re seeing all this scrum all over the nation,” he said.
“It’s created by the law and the practice and the policy of the the elected officials at the state level, the county level and the city level, telling them to oppose federal law.”
He added, “That’s why we call this the Free State of Florida, because we’re for the people. They’re for the criminals.”
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