ICE fears arise as 2 Lake Worth city manager candidates interviewed
Half of our City does not speak English at home
Two of four candidates to become Lake Worth Beach city manager addressed concerns about ICE detentions in a city filled with recent immigrantsDays after one of Palm Beach County's most immigrant-filled cities signed a policing deal over the objections of ICE critics, the issue of how to deal with detentions — and the fear of them — came up again in Lake Worth Beach's search for a new city manager.
The City Commission voted 3-1 on Sept. 2 to increase payments by $500,000 annually for three years to the police agency it contracts with, the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, to hire park rangers. Advocates for immigrants and their U.S.-born families demanded the city reject the deal because PBSO works with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The city will spend more than $15.8 million annually.
Two of the four finalists for the city manager position discussed during a Sept. 9 commission meeting the fear from residents worrying that law enforcement will detain them and turn them over to ICE, regardless of whether they have broken the law.
About 41% of the city's nearly 44,000 residents come from another country, and 57% do not speak English at home, U.S. Census Bureau estimates show.
Commissioner Chris McVoy, the lone "no" vote on the PBSO contract, pointed out that federal government has ramped up its denials of asylum cases. "Legal help is not going to do any good," he said. McVoy said "the federal government is regularly doing things they know they can't do, and they're doing them anyway. ... We need much stronger pushback that says we need to do something that actually is useful."
The Sheriff's Office works with ICE through Section 287(g) of the federal Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows ICE to deputize state and local law-enforcement agencies. Gov. Ron DeSantis required Florida law-enforcement agencies to comply in 2025.
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