GAINESVILLE, Fla. — University of Florida students and Gainesville residents gathered outside police headquarters Thursday to protest a new immigration enforcement policy they say could make immigrant residents afraid to interact with local officers.
“Immigrants are welcome here,” UF senior Katherine Canev told The Independent Florida Alligator during the Sept. 3 demonstration. “I’m here today because our immigrant neighbors deserve to feel safe in the community where they belong.”
The protest came after the Gainesville Police Department adopted new guidelines Aug. 27 addressing how officers should handle encounters involving people they suspect may be living in the United States without lawful immigration status.
Demonstrators lined sidewalks near GPD headquarters carrying signs that included “Stop ICE Terror” and “GPD policy = Racial Profiling,” according to The Alligator. Students from the UF chapter of the NAACP and Students for Socialism joined representatives from the Socialist Party of Gainesville and other community members.
The protest puts Gainesville in the middle of a much larger debate playing out across Florida over how deeply local police agencies should participate in federal immigration enforcement.
What Gainesville’s new policy requires
According to The Alligator’s reporting on the new GPD policy, officers are directed to collect additional information — including a photograph — when they have grounds under the policy to suspect someone is undocumented.
The guidelines also address encounters involving crime victims and witnesses.
The policy says characteristics such as a person’s inability to speak English are not enough on their own to establish suspicion about immigration status. Other circumstances, including fleeing from officers when connected to suspected criminal activity, can be considered as part of an officer’s assessment, The Alligator reported.
The rules also address people already being arrested. If a person in custody has an active Immigration and Customs Enforcement warrant, officers are directed to hold that person while awaiting federal immigration authorities.
That distinction matters because Gainesville Police has not entered into the federal government’s 287(g) program, which allows participating state and local agencies to perform certain immigration-enforcement functions under agreements with ICE.
Other agencies in the area have taken a different approach. Public records compiled by 287(g) Watch show that the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office entered agreements with ICE in February 2025, including task-force and warrant-service arrangements.
Gainesville Police’s decision not to join 287(g) has not eliminated concern among protesters, who argue the department’s new internal policy still moves local officers closer to federal immigration enforcement.
Protesters warn policy could damage trust
Haley Pridgeon, a UF political science and African American studies senior who serves as external vice president of the university’s NAACP chapter, told The Alligator that she believes the policy will disproportionately affect people of color.
“All people deserve dignity and life and freedom,” Pridgeon said.
Pat Farell, president of the Democratic Progressive Caucus in Alachua County, also joined the demonstration and raised concerns that the policy could encourage racial profiling.
“There’s going to be people that will [be] emboldened personally to act like ICE [agents],” Farell told The Alligator.
Those claims reflect the protesters’ concerns and are not findings that Gainesville Police has engaged in racial profiling.
Ethan Maia de Needell, a coordinator with the Gainesville Immigrant Neighbor Inclusion Initiative, argued that unclear portions of the policy could make residents less willing to trust officers.
“[The policy will] make our community less safe overall,” he told The Alligator.
The debate is especially significant in a university city where Gainesville Police and the University of Florida Police Department operate in overlapping parts of the community. UFPD has jurisdiction on campus and in surrounding areas specified under state law, while Gainesville Police handles much of the city beyond university property.
For protesters, the concern goes beyond who can formally act on behalf of ICE. They say residents who fear questions about immigration status may become less willing to report crimes, serve as witnesses or seek help from police.
Supporters of increased cooperation with federal immigration authorities, meanwhile, have argued across Florida that local agencies should assist in enforcing immigration laws and honoring federal warrants.
The Gainesville protest shows that the question is no longer confined to Tallahassee or Washington. It is now a local policing issue — one that students, immigrant advocates and Gainesville residents are challenging directly outside police headquarters.
For now, the new Gainesville Police immigration policy remains the focus of that dispute, with opponents pressing the department over how officers will apply the guidelines in everyday encounters and whether the policy will change the relationship between police and Gainesville’s immigrant communities.
