A large group of immigration protesters held a walk out at Miami-Dade County hall during Tuesday's commission meeting over Mayor Carlos Gimenez's order to honor U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention requests.
About a half dozen people were escorted out of the meeting when they were told they weren't allowed to discuss items that aren't on the agenda, including the ICE issue.
A short time later, a large group walked out all at once, chanting "When immigrant bodies are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!"
The mayor's order is on the agenda for the commission's February 17 meeting.
"There is a time for that, they can say whatever they want on the 17th but you know they have a long agenda and we want to keep people on message," Mayor Gimenez said.
Mayor Gimenez made national headlines when he directed Miami-Dade jailers to hold inmates who are undocumented immigrants for federal authorities. The county stopped doing that in 2013, pointing out the federal government was not reimbursing the county for the jail time.
But when President Trump threatened to withhold millions in federal funding for municipalities that don't fully cooperate with immigration authorities, so-called sanctuary cities, Gimenez said he didn't want to risk losing that money.
He repeated that sentiment at Tuesday's meeting.
Local
"We're gonna comply with the federal request, we are not a sanctuary city, we have never been a sanctuary city, it was the Obama administration that kind of labeled us as a sanctuary city and it was their administration also that made the first threat of withholding federal money. The Trump administration kind of followed through on that," Gimenez told reporters. "We don't want to be on that list, it's $350 million of federal funding and then possibly hundreds of millions if not billions in terms of transit money that's totally discretionary that's at risk."
