Pinellas Schools won’t enforce ICE agreement school police chief signed without authorization

Pinellas County Schools are backing off from an agreement with the federal government to deputize school police for immigration enforcement efforts.

Luke Williams, chief of Pinellas County Schools Police, signed the agreement authorizing officers to question people’s immigration status and detain them for turnover to immigration enforcement officials, according to a statement a district spokesperson sent to Florida Phoenix Thursday morning.

However, the school board and superintendent didn’t authorize Williams to sign that agreement and didn’t know he had.

“The agreement is administrative in nature as it does not obligate the district to participate in training,” wrote Isabel Mascareñas, the school district’s public information officer. “Pinellas County Schools does not intend to nominate any member of the Schools Police department to attend the training program to perform the functions of an immigration officer through the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).”

ICE took the Pinellas school police off its list of agencies with a pending task force agreement on Thursday morning, a day after the Phoenix reported that the district would have been the first in the country to enact such an agreement.

A spokesperson for the Florida Department of Education directed questions to the county but confirmed the department has encouraged districts to enact task force model agreements with ICE if they believe it would benefit safety.

All the sheriffs in the state and several municipalities and state agencies have entered task force model agreements with ICE, which Gov. Ron DeSantis has described as the maximum level of collaboration with the federal government.

Guidance the district issued following the Trump administration’s reversal of a policy restricting immigration arrests at schools remains in place, Mascareñas said.

“As always, the goal is to maintain a safe learning environment for our students. Ultimately, law enforcement is the function of law enforcement agencies, and not of the schools or the District,” the Jan. 27 guidance from the district to school principals states.

The district recommended that principals contact the legal department if ICE or other immigration officials contact them and emphasized that schools can’t inquire about students’ immigration status. However, the guidance also instructs schools to cooperate with officials seeking access to students and contact the parents only if the officials allow it.

Jared Nordlund, Florida director for Latino civil rights group UnidosUS, found it concerning that the school board and superintendent hadn’t been informed that the police chief had signed the agreement with ICE.

“I’m now wondering if that’s going to happen across the state, I mean, that shouldn’t be happening at all. … All people involved in the school district, from managing down to teaching, should be involved in a plan,” he said in a phone interview with the Phoenix.

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Republished with permission from the Florida Phoenix. By Jackie Llanos, a recent graduate of the University of Richmond. She has interned at Nashville Public Radio, Virginia Public Media and Virginia Mercury.