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On the left: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducting a raid (Fox News/YouTube). On the right: Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier (Office of Attorney General).
Advocates for immigration are criticizing Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier for what they describe as “outright contempt of court.” They accuse him of ignoring a judge’s directive to halt local immigration arrests under a newly enacted state law. In their federal filing last week, they labeled these actions as “completely unacceptable” and “illegal.”
Attorneys representing the Florida Immigrant Coalition, the Farmworker Association of Florida, and two individual plaintiffs made these accusations in a 26-page document last Thursday. This was in response to a brief from Uthmeier, answering U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams’ inquiry about why he has not followed her order.
Williams, a Barack Obama appointee, issued a 14-day stay on April 4 that blocked a law signed into effect by Gov. Ron DeSantis in February, which gave state law enforcement the power to arrest and prosecute undocumented immigrants. It is now a first-degree misdemeanor for a person to enter Florida as an “unauthorized alien.”
Williams ordered that the law not be enforced in Florida, arguing that it was the federal government’s responsibility to apprehend and litigate migrants, not individual states.
Uthmeier initially directed authorities in the Sunshine State to stop immigration arrests from being carried out, but he reworded his directive just days later in an April 23 letter to Florida law enforcement agencies — saying he actually “cannot prevent” the arrests from happening, according to the Miami Herald.
Williams extended her restraining order on April 18 and then issued a preliminary injunction on April 29, noting how the law was “likely” unconstitutional. She ordered Uthmeier to explain why he should not be held in contempt for the April 23 letter he sent.
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The AG’s legal team sent a response on May 12, the very last day of Williams’ deadline, saying he has “consistently abided by the court’s order to cease enforcing” the law.
“Nowhere does the TRO (expressly or impliedly) require the attorney general to refrain from sharing his views about the order with law enforcement,” Uthmeier’s lawyers claimed.
His opponents beg to differ.
“The Attorney General asserts that finding contempt here would ‘deny an important Florida government official the right to speak for himself,’ ‘implicating serious First and Tenth Amendment concerns,” the immigrant groups explained Thursday, quoting Uthmeier’s May 12 response directly.
“But a contempt finding would do no such thing,” they said.
“Undoubtedly, the Attorney General may speak and may express his disagreement with the court’s orders — including to the court, the 11th Circuit [Court of Appeals], the public, and law enforcement. But what the Attorney General may not do is tell law enforcement officers that no order restrains them from enforcing S.B. 4C, when in fact one does, and when the likely result is arrests and detentions in violation of the Court’s order,” the groups explained.
