Eyeball recognition, surveillance towers part of $40 million immigration awards for local Florida police

This story was originally published by the Florida Phoenix.

More than $40 million in Florida immigration grants will pay local law enforcement agencies for capturing and holding detainees — costs that will cover a biometric eyeball scanner, surveillance towers, and a printer.

Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Cabinet approved the multimillion-dollar ask Tuesday morning. It’s part of a broader, $250 million state grant created last year to both encourage and reimburse local agencies participating in the sweeping illegal immigration crackdown pushed by President Donald Trump and at the state level by DeSantis.

Of the total, $14 million will be spent on new requests from six agencies and the remaining $26 million on amended submissions from 12 other counties.

AI-related requests dominate, from license plate readers to surveillance towers to English-translation body cameras. At least eight of the 17 involved counties want to use state dollars on artificial intelligence technology.

The Washington County Sheriff Office is asking for more than half a million dollars for a rapid DNA testing machine, a rapid ID system, and an iris biometric system. This is an emerging technology allowing officers to identify people whose eyes are exposed — even if they’re wearing sunglasses.

“This technology supports identification of criminal aliens in a matter of seconds by utilizing the most anatomically unique biometric, the iris,” the county’s submission reads. “This system will increase the speed of identifying aliens by comparison with a national database.”

This state-level spending comes as Florida officials still await more than $600 million in federal reimbursements. At DeSantis’ direction, Florida has deputized all of its county sheriffs as immigration agents and constructed two migrant detention centers.

These sweeping maneuvers were paid for through the state’s emergency management fund. The DeSantis administration has spent $573 million on immigration enforcement since 2023, $406 million of it in just six months. Although officials claimed in September that a hefty $608 million grant was coming Florida’s way to cover the lengthening tab, the state has yet to see a dime.

Federal lawyers have started to claim that they never promised to pay back Florida in the first place.

The State Board and AI Body Cams

The spending will flow through the new State Board of Immigration Enforcement, made up of DeSantis and the Cabinet, which itself includes Attorney General James Uthmeier, Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson, and Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia, independently elected statewide officials.

Since September, they’ve approved a total of 101 grant requests worth over $60 million. But just $93,544 has been disbursed so far to only six agencies, the state’s government accountability website shows.

According to the requests outlined Tuesday, sheriffs in Palm Beach and Sarasota counties zeroed out their previously approved petitions for law enforcement and corrections bonuses. Sarasota said this was due to “fairness.”

“The few personnel that were chosen to carry out immigration duties in a law enforcement action are no better or different than any deputy that carries similar responsibilities,” public information officer Matthew Binkley told the Phoenix in an email. “This is not a specialty for bonus pay.”

Palm Beach officials did not return a request for comment.

A discrepancy emerged during the Board meeting Tuesday. The panel approved a $9 million request from the Lee County Sheriff’s Office, although the publicly available document shows the coastal county had wanted $22 million.

The last-minute change eliminated $13.7 million of Lee’s request for a six-year, $18 million contract with an AI body cam company called Axon. The approved version will instead pay for a two-year, $4.3 million contract. 

It also put in a $1 million request to implement an AI policing system called Peregrine and a $158,000 submission for two mobile surveillance towers.

Lee is second only to the Florida Highway Patrol in total encounters with undocumented immigrants, according to the board’s website.

Printers, detention beds, body scanners

Not all requests are AI-related.

The Flagler County Sheriff’s Office, for example, is asking for $800 for a new printer to “support increased booking activity due to increased detention facility population” and $10,000 for 100 new transport restraints

The Okaloosa County Commission wants $399,000 to sublet 3,992 detention beds for ICE from Feb. 17 until June 30. 

The Osceola County Sheriff’s Office is to get $594,000 for ballistic car doors on both the driver’s and passenger side, while the Osceola County Board of Commissioners gets $182,500 for a body scanner to detect “weapons, cellphones, and contraband that’s hidden under clothing and inside the body of ICE detainees.”

Other notable requests:

Lee County Sheriff’s Office: $1,062,255.80 for 60 license plate readers, $2,167,496.30 for 1,200 angel armor vests, and $184,959.09 for four license plate reader trailers equipped with surveillance technology.

Flagler County Sheriff’s Office: $6,500 for 100 mattresses, $198,000 for 60 rapid ID devices, $46,000 for five in-car cameras, $7,500 for five handheld inmate-tracking devices, and $2,800 for 400 blankets.

Osceola County Sheriff’s Office: $536,500 for Peregrine software, $2,816,273 for body cams, and $850,000 for bullet-proof vests.

Fort Walton Beach Police Department: $285,101 for an AI software platform.

Osceola County Board of Commissioners $8,425 for 100 detention mattresses.

Escambia County Sheriff’s Office: $5,399,243.68 for radio systems and $293,249.75 for a Quantum electronic data storage system.

Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office: $388,462.93 for 117 rapid ID devices (although 50 of those were already at a cost of $169,000).

Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office: $913,500 for Peregrine software and $87,400 (up from 67,000 already approved) for subletting beds for ICE.

Polk County Sheriff’s Office: $8,720,597 to replace and upgrade radio systems.

Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office: $7,500 for AWS GovCloud, a cloud software system to specifically upload and share data with the State Board of Immigration Enforcement. 

Alachua County Sheriff’s Office: Removes $160,000 of their previous $315,000 request for detention beds, and instead directs that amount toward 19 new radios for their jail transportation team.

Madison County Sheriff’s Office: $313,239 for Peregrine software.

Hernando County Sheriff’s Office: $149,022.72 for various license plate reading equipment.

Update: $13.7 million of Lee County’s $18 million ask for an AI body cam contract was cut out of the deal.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.