Residents criticize commission meeting on migrant cost

At the end of the Sarasota County Commission’s three-day budget session last week was a scheduled special meeting with five county agencies and organizations invited to discuss the local fiscal impacts of illegal immigration.

Of the five expected, only Sarasota County Sheriff Kurt Hoffman and 12th Judicial Circuit State Attorney Ed Brodsky appeared, with no-shows by representatives of Florida Sarasota Doctors Hospital, Florida Englewood Hospital and the Sarasota County School Board.

But there were plenty of other speakers in attendance. 

Of the 26 who addressed commissioners during the public comments portion at the outset of the meeting, 25 spoke against motivations for having the meeting in the first place, leveling accusations of grandstanding, xenophobia, discrimination and more. The lone supporter of the meeting was Commissioner Joe Neunder’s mother, who hails from Puerto Rico.

“In my opinion, this workshop is illegitimate. It’s nothing more than an election year stunt to whip up the base through anti-immigrant hate and vengeance,” said community activist Carol Lerner. 

“There is no problem with crime or fentanyl with undocumented immigrants. No human being should ever be called illegal,” said Andrea Doria Kale, a Democrat candidate for U.S. House of Representatives District 18. “It’s still not a crime to seek asylum in this country. This is not a real problem in Sarasota County. You should be focusing on the real problems facing us.”

“This workshop seems biased against immigrants, only concerned with the harm they might do rather than the benefit they might bring to the community,” said Jules Rayne.  “We should be including them in the American dream rather than excluding them. This commission needs to stop putting conservative party politics over the public interest.”

Much of the two presentations covered federal policy and national trends, with only Hoffman bringing specific local financial impact data. First, though, he described conditions he witnessed at the Texas border during a recent trip there by invitation of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

“They wanted us to see first-hand not only the drug corridors and the correlation between what's going on at the border and the illegal drugs that are getting into our community, but actually to speak to the border patrol about what they're seeing in terms of human trafficking and cartels,” Hoffman said.

Hoffman clarified to commissioners and to the in-person and online audience that his appearance at the meeting was strictly to provide the hard costs to arrest and incarcerate undocumented individuals paid for by the Sarasota County taxpayers. He specified that only those who end up there are arrested because of crimes they commit, not simply because they are here.

“Just (to) reiterate for everybody who’s listening, law enforcement is not going out to construction projects. We're not going into restaurants,” Hoffman said. “These are folks who came to the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office, and particularly to your jail, by virtue of criminal activity.”

That cost to the taxpayers for all of 2023 and year-to-date in 2024 is $554,968 for 87 individuals.

Those arrests include:

• 2 homicides
• 25 assaults
• 5 sexual assaults
• 7 drug-related offenses
• 1 kidnapping-related offense
• 11 larceny/burglary/stolen vehicle cases
• 6 fraud cases

“So probably several million dollars in terms of the impact on the jail if you go back to 2020,” Hoffman said.

And then there are the soft costs.

“I have to explain to a parent or to a relative, why a homicide or a burglary has occurred by somebody who technically under our laws should not be in the country,” Hoffman said. “That is something that falls on me to try to explain, which is difficult at times.”

Hoffman described the processes of arresting and notifying the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which sometimes, but not always, removes the detainees. Those not removed and cannot bond out remain in Sarasota County Jail. He described two recent encounters with individuals who have illegally entered the country for a third time: one a stopped for a DUI who also was found in possession of multiple weapons and another who carjacked a vehicle in Englewood, traveled north and attempted a second carjacking of a U.S. Army veteran who defended himself with a firearm.

At the conclusion of the meeting, Neunder expressed his thoughts about the need for the discussion.

“I actually think this is the right time to have that conversation about the topic of this meeting, which is illegal immigration and its impact,” he said. “Nothing personal on the individuals, but it's important for us as we go through our budget process to interact with our sheriff and our other constitutionals, the people directly involved in this, do they need more resources? This job is about the health, safety and wellness of our community.

“We don't have a say in what happens on the national level. Those national policies and directions that happen in Washington trickle down, and I believe affect us here at the local level. We don't have a say in that, but yet we do have to deal with it.”