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Going into Tuesday’s Orange County Board of County Commissioners’ meeting, the expectation was that both Commissioner Kelly Martinez Semrad of District 5 and Nicole Wilson of District 1 would vote against the addendum to the county’s 287(g) agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, giving corrections officers authority to transport detainees to federal facilities.
The addendum — signed Friday as Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings said “under extreme duress" — still passed 5 to 2 with Semrad and Wilson voting nay.
But there may still be a risk that the two commissioners could lose their seats over their no votes since Gov. Ron DeSantis has shown he has no qualms about removing duly elected officials, like State Attorneys Monique Worrell and Andrew Warren, from office.
Wilson described the whole situation as an “absolute absurdity.”
“Orange County has done everything under the law to comply with the law, and it’s insufficient according to the governor,” she told VoxPopuli in a phone interview today. “Which means that nothing is ever going to be understandably sufficient … It’s a commandeering of local resources for a federal operation and that goes against so many of the tenants of local government.”
Wilson, an attorney, said that agreements signed under duress, at the “cost of potentially your livelihood or your safety,” are not legitimate agreements and that if DeSantis wanted the county’s resources, he should have issued an executive order.
“But what the governor wants is to be able to say that all of the counties fell in line,” Wilson said. “This is about a national stage he’s performing on to say, Florida got in line. And he can’t do that if it’s just an executive order.”
Wilson said she’s not thinking about any personal repercussions of her no vote.
“I don't have the time to think about it. I literally got up the next day and had meetings about right of way and putting stop signs into a particular neighborhood.
" I'm concerned for the Democratic process. I'm concerned for the integrity of our elections, but I'm not concerned personally. … If I'm removed, I will continue to serve my community and figure out another way to do it and fight for democracy.”
