ORLANDO, Fla. — Seven Democrats on the House Oversight Committee were in Orlando on Monday to investigate immigration enforcement in the state with most detentions nationwide — and also announce what they hope to be a major change in policy if their party takes control of Congress next year.

The members, including U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Orlando, met with immigrant advocacy groups and local officials before heading to the Orange County Jail to talk with immigration detainees.

They said the swing through Florida is critical in collecting information ahead of the midterm elections, when Democrats hope to take back both the House and Senate from the GOP. In advance of that, they announced the introduction of the No Illegal Captivity and Extensions Act of 2026, or NICE Act, which would require the release of ICE detainees who face no other criminal charges.

“Hopefully we’ll have a Democratic majority and we’ll be seeking accountability, but also legislating on how to change the system,” Frost said. “I want to make sure all members of Congress how things work in other states.”

Unlike in Democratic-controlled states – where the Trump administration’s immigration arrests are frequently carried out in high-profile operations in places such as in Chicago and Minneapolis – Florida detains far more people out of the public view.

With law enforcement agencies deputized under state law to perform limited immigration enforcement, many times such arrests start with a traffic stop or some other routine interaction with authorities.

Frost, citing data from ICE directly, said about 80% of detentions in Florida come from traffic stops.

“We don’t have a front line,” he said. “It’s very surgical, it’s very quiet, but it’s happening at a very, very large scale.”

Committee members held a roundtable at the Orange County Courthouse in the morning with Orange County Commissioner Nicole Wilson, immigration attorneys, representatives of the Hope CommUnity Center and other groups.

Wilson asked the committee to assist Orange County in receiving a full reimbursement from the federal government for costs related to detaining immigrants at the jail.

The county has had a long-running dispute with the feds over its rate of reimbursement – ultimately leading to the Board of County Commission voting last month to cut Immigration and Customs Enforcement out of the agreement allowing people to be detained at the jail, and instead pursuing a different kind of deal with ICE called a Basic Ordering Agreement, or BOA.

While that would mean a lower rate of reimbursement, it also would greatly reduce who can be held at the jail. The BOA limits immigration detainers to those already incarcerated on criminal charges.

Still, Wilson said the county’s responsibilities should be defined, and local taxpayers should be made whole.

“We need full federal reimbursement … we’ve not been made whole,” she said. “We need clear limits on the extent to which local governments can be compelled to carry out federal administrative immigration enforcement.”

Ericka Gomez-Tejeda, the organizing director at the Hope CommUnity Center, asked for the members to push legislation forcing the release of people under immigration detainers if ICE doesn’t take them to a detention center before the required holding period expires. She also pushed for them to review the immigration bond system, in which families often pay thousands of dollars in bond only for their family member not to be released — and they don’t get refunded.

Rep. Robert Garcia, D-California, and the committee’s ranking Democratic member, said the committee has been working to document what it contends are wrongs by federal immigration authorities, and that they intend to try to correct them if Democrats take control of Congress.

“What we heard about not just the detainment of folks, [but] how they’re being held, how they’re being taken in and out of these facilities and jails, the way folks are being stopped by all sorts of state agencies, should outrage every single Floridian and every single American,” Garcia said.

The visit was made by Reps. Garcia, Yassamin Ansari, D-Ariz., Wesley Bell, D-Mo., Summer Lee, D-Penn., Emily Randall, D-Wash., and Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va. The group was expected to head south to West Palm Beach for an investigation related to financier and accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

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