Pro-immigrant activists are calling for more transparency from the Pinellas County Sheriff’s office after a representative didn’t disclose information about immigrant detention policies.
Records obtained by Creative Loafing Tampa Bay show that the Public Safety Coordinating Council, a lesser-known government body tasked with keeping jail populations down, was given inaccurate information when it asked the Pinellas sheriff’s office about the high number of immigrant detentions.
The sheriff’s office told CL that the inaccurate information provided wasn’t something the representative should be expected to know. At the same time, the sheriff was increasing jail populations through controversial immigrant detention techniques.
Now, immigrant rights organizers are calling for more transparency from the Pinellas sheriff.
Inaccurate information presented to council
Pinellas Sheriff Bob Gualtieri—who helped build national policy enabling mass deportation—is on the council and, like many high-ranking county officials, he sends a representative to attend the meetings on his behalf.
Per transcripts and audio recordings obtained by CL, Pinellas’ PSCC started discussing the massive increase in people held at the jail on behalf of ICE at its Dec. 1, 2025, meeting.
In June of 2024, that number was just 82. By June of 2025, it was 343. In June of 2026, it was 503.
Deanna Carey—a major with PCSO and the sheriff’s representative at the meeting—told the council that ICE detentions lasted fewer than 72 hours. But that wasn’t true, and Gualteri knew it.
A ProPublica investigation revealed that during the increase, the Pinellas County Jail was releasing immigrants into ICE custody and then rebooking them. This reset a 72-hour time limit on detaining immigrants without criminal charges. Gualtieri—who runs the jail and is known for a hands-on management style—said at a press conference earlier this month he didn’t know about the rebookings until around October of 2025.
Maj. Carey didn’t mention the rebookings. PCSO told CL that she wasn’t aware of the rebookings at the time, as Carey does not work in the Department of Detention and Corrections. Nobody from that department was present at the meeting.
Ten days after the Dec. 1 meeting, ICE delivered a waiver to PCSO allowing it to detain immigrants without criminal charges for over 72 hours. Gualtieri did not publicize this waiver, and ProPublica was not made aware of it until after its investigation came out.
Gualtieri also didn’t notify Pinellas’ PSCC about the change, and was under no statutory obligation to do so. When the council met again on March 9, 2026, it discussed the quarterly report on the jail population. The sheriff’s office answered questions for the report, and in one of their answers said ICE detainees “may remain in custody for up to 72 hours.”
The Public Safety Coordinating Council
Under Florida law, each county must have a Public Safety Coordinating Council. The group is supposed to balance public safety while keeping jail populations down. It’s made up of people who lead homeless services, judges, the state attorney, and a county commissioner, among others.
The council holds no statutory power beyond making recommendations to county leadership.
Early this month, the PSCC moved its Sept. 14 meeting to a larger room to accommodate the large number of people attending for public comment. Attendees spoke for 30 minutes, asking the council to find ways to end the practice of holding people in county jail for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, citing budgetary and humanitarian concerns.
Council members did not respond to concerns from the dais.
Activists call it a breakdown in transparency, the sheriff says ‘nothing was done improperly’
Courtney Prokopas, the immigration justice chair with the Pinellas County League of Women Voters, was at the council’s Sept. 14 meeting.
“Any significant shift in operations at the Pinellas County Jail should have been brought before the PSCC, given its responsibility to advise and apprise county leadership on jail operations and population,” Prokopas told CL. “That is a massive departure from previous operations and requires an equally significant shift in oversight.”
When asked about the outdated information presented to the PSCC, a representative for the sheriff’s office sent the following reply via email:
“Creative Loafing seems intent on engaging in ‘gotcha journalism.’ You have an obligation if you want to be considered a ‘journalist’ to be fair and objective in your reporting and rely on facts, not made-up self-serving innuendo.
With that said. Major Deanna Carey is the commander of the Judicial Operations Bureau, not the Department of Detention and Corrections. She represents the Sheriff at the Public Safety Coordinating Council meetings. This came up spontaneously and was not something Major Carey would have researched prior to the meeting. Major Carey represented what she knew to be accurate at the time. Major Carey, from the Judicial Operations Bureau, had no knowledge of the authorization we received in the Department of Detention and Corrections to hold illegal aliens longer than 72 hours, and she would not be expected to know this. A claim that we provided false information is complete nonsense.
Make sure you accurately report our statement because nothing was done improperly.”
PCSO did not answer follow-up inquiries about why the quarterly indicators report also incorrectly identified a 72-hour time limit. ICE holds were only briefly referenced at the June 1, 2026, meeting of the PSCC, and the waiver and rebookings were once again not mentioned even though both continued through this time frame.
“The fact that PCSO representative Major Carey was unaware of the December 2025 memorandum signals a breakdown in communication and transparency that is unacceptable to Pinellas County Residents,” Prokopas told CL.
Sheriff lacks oversight, but wants to address jail population
In 2024, detainees had to sleep on the floor of the jail following changes to bail law that made it harder for people with low bail amounts to get out while they await trial. At this point, the jail was reaching a daily population of around 3,300.
When asked about the rebookings at a press conference early this month, Gualtieri said it was ICE’s decision and that it was better than the alternative. “As opposed to having these people sleeping on the floor in the Tampa ICE office or elsewhere, they brought them back and they rebooked them,” Gualtieri said.
He’s also spoken about the lack of oversight in his role.
“In Florida, … sheriffs are truly independent constitutional officers,” Gualtieri told the hosts of “Fifty-Six,” a podcast made by PCSO’s PR department. “People sometimes think that the sheriff’s office is part of county government. It’s not. I don’t work for the County Commission, don’t work for the County Administrator.”
Pitch in to help make the Tampa Bay Journalism Project a success.
Subscribe to Creative Loafing newsletters.
Follow us: Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | BlueSky
This article appears in Sept. 24 – 30, 2026.
