Miami island where Bezos, Ivanka and Jared live is all in on immigration enforcement

Syra Ortiz Blanes and Claire Heddles, Miami Herald on Oct 23, 2026

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MIAMI — The tiny Miami-Dade County enclave of Indian Creek Village — a manicured golf course surrounded by mega mansions and super yachts — is home to multi-billionaires Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, celebrities like NFL star Tom Brady and singer Julio Iglesias and President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner.

The quiet island off Miami Beach has its own police department patrolling the 41 sprawling estates and luxury compounds on land and sea. The Indian Creek Department of Public Safety dutifully watches a lonely bridge in Surfside that connects the village to the ordinary world.

But despite already operating like a modern-day medieval fortress, surrounded by water with only one way in and out, local police went even further and staffed up the so-called “Billionaire Bunker” like a Texas town across Mexican border.

Last summer, after Trump retook the White House and Florida’s leadership pushed the state’s cities to sign on to the president’s mass deportation agenda, Indian Creek Village went all in.

Unlike many small cities in South Florida that ignored the state’s pressure tactics, Indian Creek Village trained all six of its officers to arrest people suspected of violating immigration law under a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agreement known as 287(g).

By contrast, the City of Miami, with a population of nearly half a million, has trained just two of its 1,400 officers under its deal with ICE.

Indian Creek Village’s rush to partner with ICE turned out to be largely a symbolic effort: The village housing some of Trump’s most high-profile donors and family members reports making zero arrests under the program.

Roseann Prado, the village’s municipal clerk, told the Miami Herald that officers have not “yet conducted any immigration enforcement actions under ICE authority.” Prado confirmed that ICE has not activated the trained officers or issued them formal identification credentials. And the village has not received funding from the Department of Homeland Security to participate.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising the village has made no immigration raids. Publicly reported crime — in a place where residents have far bigger budgets than any law enforcement agency in the country — is reported to be nonexistent. Indian Creek had zero reported homicides, robberies, aggravated assaults or rapes in the past decade, according to FBI data.

Indian Creek has among the highest number of ICE-trained officers among the many departments that recently shared their data with the Miami Herald. Pembroke Pines also had six officers trained under the program, followed by Miami Springs with four, Davie with three, Miami with two, and Pembroke Park with one.

Under a push by Gov. Ron DeSantis, state law prohibits the existence of “sanctuary cities,” which it defines as local governments restricting cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

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