Founding Partner and Past FACDL President Jason Blank Quoted in Article About Florida’s Leading Agency for Immigration Arrests Not Using Body Cameras

Ana Goñi-Lessan
Stephany Matat
USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida
August 11, 2025

Florida officers have arrested thousands of immigrants this year.

It took 12 minutes before a Florida Highway Patrol officer checked Griselda Vazquez-Duran for injuries after bashing the driver’s window of her gray GMC with a baton.

In March, the trooper had pulled over Vazquez-Duran, a Mexican national who has been living in the United States without legal status for 17 years, for going 16 miles an hour above the speed limit on the west side of Tallahassee, the state capital of Florida.

The officer asked in English, “Do you need EMS? You don’t have any glass in your eyes, do you?”

“I don’t understand,” said Vazquez-Duran, while two officers shut the patrol car door.

What happened up to this point isn’t fully clear, however, because FHP troopers don’t wear body cameras, leaving only a written account and limited views from dash camera footage to explain how a routine traffic stop escalated into something far more serious.

A Florida Highway Patrol officer orders Griselda Vazquez-Duran to get out of the car as she pulls out her baton during a traffic stop.
Vazquez-Duran doesn’t speak English well, but tried to explain that her immigration case was pending, which is why she didn’t have a driver’s license and only her Mexican passport. The trooper asked if she could call someone on her phone to translate, so she called her son on speakerphone for help.

The trooper told Vazquez-Duran to get out of the car multiple times because she didn’t have a license – even warning her she would break the window – but her son told his mother not to get out of the car, according to the arrest affidavit.

Part of the conversation leading up to the arrest was hard to hear, because the trooper had country music playing from her vehicle louder than the audio on the dash footage.

After the trooper broke the car window, Vazquez-Duran “tensed and pulled away,” when the trooper pulled her out of the car, according to an arrest affidavit. What is missing from the affidavit but is heard in the dash camera audio is her saying “one moment” and “lawyer” in Spanish.

According to the FHP Policy Manual, using a baton is appropriate when the subject “poses a threat to a member’s safety and resists the member’s attempts to effectively perform law enforcement duties by offering active physical resistance or who physically attacks a member.”

Vazquez-Duran was charged with driving without a license and resisting an officer without violence, and later she was detained on federal immigration charges for illegal reentry into the United States, as she had been previously deported.

A few months later, her case became an example for the U.S. Department of Justice to validate President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration policies, part of what’s called Operation Take Back America. Florida has gone all-in when assisting the president with mass deportation policies, so much that Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republican lawmakers passed some of the strictest immigration laws in the country.

At her federal sentencing, Chief U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor, a Trump appointee, gave her a harsher sentence than most illegal reentry cases, six months in prison, after taking into consideration the resisting arrest charge. Vazquez-Duran, who pleaded guilty, is currently incarcerated at the federal women’s prison in Tallahassee.

Her encounter with law enforcement is just one of thousands in Florida, as immigrants who have been stopped for traffic infractions are then detained on immigration charges. But missing from her case was body-worn camera footage, an asset that would offer transparency to the Trump administration’s immigration agenda, and the complete view of how Vazquez-Duran resisted, which neither the arrest affidavit nor the dash camera footage show.

A recent ProPublica report says there have been at least 50 news reports this year of immigration officers breaking in windows to speed up arrests. The decade prior, ProPublica found just eight cases. The time from the trooper first asking Vazquez-Duran to get out of the car to using her baton is less than two minutes.

Why the Florida Highway Patrol doesn’t use body cameras

State troopers, who at first assisted ICE officers and are now empowered by the federal government to conduct immigration arrests themselves, do not use body cameras.

When FHP had to choose between purchasing body or dash cameras, the agency decided to buy dash cameras.

That’s because “several years ago” when the agency had to choose between purchasing body or dash cameras, the agency decided to buy dash cameras because “the majority of all of our encounters occur in or around our patrol vehicles,” said Jim Beauford, a spokesperson for the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, which includes FHP.

Beauford listed several other reasons why the agency did not choose to use body cams: They needed ethernet or Wi-fi to upload video; battery life did not last more than 12 hours; dash cameras automatically turn on in certain circumstances, like turning on the vehicle’s emergency lights, removing a shotgun or rifle from the in-car rack; and being involved in a crash.

“This increases transparency as it eliminated the scenario where an officer forgot to turn on their camera when a critical incident occurs,” he said.

In early August, the agency put out a bid for a multi-million dollar contract to “modernize, upgrade and re-engineer” the video recording system in their vehicles. Currently, FHP’s fleet includes 2,400 patrol vehicles and 50 motorcycles. Body cams are not included in the contract.

FHP’s lack of body cams provides a limited scope on immigration arrests – not just at traffic stops, but also immigration raids at construction sites, when troopers are nowhere near their vehicle. Vazquez-Duran’s case included five angles of dash camera footage, with hard-to-hear audio, which at one point is turned off when three troopers are speaking with one another.

ICE agents wearing masks for anonymity and the construction of detention centers like the South Florida Detention Facility in the Florida Everglades also have drawn concern from government accountability advocates. Barbara Petersen, the executive director for the Florida Center for Government Accountability, said law enforcement may be encouraged to operate above the law.

“If your average city police enforcement officer can wear a body cam, why can’t every law enforcement officer in Florida wear a body cam?” Petersen said.

Vazquez-Duran and her family could not be reached for comment for this story, nor could the public defender representing her in the federal case. Laura Sterling, the lawyer representing her for misdemeanors in Leon County, declined to be interviewed.

It took more than a month of waiting and several requests for dash camera video of the arrest in March, along with follow-ups, before footage was made available to the USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida. The footage was not played in the courtroom before Vazquez-Duran’s sentencing.

A wave of immigration arrests in Florida

This spring, DeSantis and the Florida Legislature passed a law during a special session requiring all state law enforcement agencies to assist in federal immigration enforcement efforts. Soon after, Florida Highway Patrol troopers began working alongside ICE to detain immigrants during traffic stops across the state, from rural areas in the Panhandle to urban centers like Miami-Dade County.

In April, the partnership culminated in Operation Tidal Wave — a week-long sting targeting immigrants in major Florida cities including Miami, Tampa, Orlando and Jacksonville. ICE reported more than 780 arrests in the first four days and promoted the operation as a “first-of-its-kind partnership” and a “massive, multi-agency immigration enforcement crackdown.”

“There’s no other state that is even in the ballpark of our efforts,” DeSantis said on Aug. 1. FHP troopers already have apprehended almost 3,000 people, and the FLHSMV will soon have a strike team called “Immigration Enforcement” to increase arrests.

The team will work closely with state and federal agencies to “identify, locate and apprehend criminal aliens across the state,” DeSantis said: “We want safe streets. The reality is some of these people what are coming here illegally, they are not trained to drive the way we would to get a license. They’re not licensed drivers in the state of Florida.

“So FHP, I guarantee you, with the apprehensions they’ve already done, I guarantee you they’ve saved many lives.”

For thousands of undocumented immigrants who have been detained in FHP traffic stops across the state this year, the officer’s words against theirs are often the final say, which is why defense attorneys say on-scene video is crucial.

“This is not a new issue. It just has a different cover on it now,” said Jason B. Blank, a past president of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and a criminal defense lawyer in Ft. Lauderdale. “I think you would hope that the law enforcement agencies would employ every tool they have in their arsenal to ensure and show that any stops they are making are done correctly, but that’s just not the case.”

Moreover, body cameras generally are better than dash cams, said Craig Trocino, director of the Innocence Clinic at the University of Miami School of Law. Dash cameras show what is right behind the car that’s pulled over; it can be difficult to see the interaction between the officer and the driver who was pulled over, he said.

“When you have a highly-charged environment like immigration, like these stops, there’s going to be controversy no matter what happens, and the best way to put that controversy to bed is to put on a body cam and record the process,” Trocino told the USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida.

Todd Lyons, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has said while he’s not a proponent of using masks, he will allow officers to cover their faces if they’re worried about their personal safety or being doxxed.

Trocino said these masked ICE agents, other unidentifiable law enforcement officers and reports of use of force add to the public’s scrutiny of Trump’s take on immigration enforcement. Trump’s favorability rating on immigration decreased from 46% to 38% in July, according to a recent Gallup poll.

“Hiding behind a mask, or refusing to use available video technology to display that everything they’re doing is correct and constitutional and humane, is a big problem,” Trocino said.

Who in Florida uses body cameras?

State law doesn’t require local law enforcement departments or state agencies to use body-worn cameras, but it does require that a law enforcement agency permit its officers to wear the cameras and establish policies for its proper use, maintenance and storage of the cameras and the data it records.

For example, Tallahassee Police Department regulations from 2022 say officers who have a body camera must wear it outside of the police department building, and some of the required recorded activities include traffic stops, sobriety evaluations, arrests and vehicle pursuits.

At a July 22 State Board of Immigration Enforcement meeting, officials there said all county sheriffs’ offices will soon be authorized to arrest immigrants who are in the country illegally.

A 2024 report obtained by the USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida shows that there are sheriff’s offices in Florida that still do not have body-worn cameras, and some have neither body-worn nor dash cameras, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Brevard, Dixie, Gadsden, Glades, Gulf, Hernando, Levy, Polk, Sarasota, Union and Washington County sheriff’s offices do not use body cameras, according to the report. Clay, Dixie, Gadsden, Gulf and Polk do not use body cameras or dash cameras. Sarasota County only uses dash cameras for DUI investigations.

A spokesperson for the Florida Sheriffs Association said the group does not keep records or suggest regulations for body worn cameras to its members. A request for comment to the Florida Police Chiefs Association is pending about use by local police departments.

Body cam footage is a First Amendment right, experts say

Video recorded by body-worn cameras are public records lauded by government accountability advocates because they provide insight into what could otherwise be a “word against word” situation for police interactions, said Lauren Bonds, the executive director of the National Police Accountability Project, a national organization of civil rights attorneys who handle law enforcement abuse cases.

It’s more uncommon to find departments, especially statewide law enforcement agencies, without body camera requirements, Bonds said.

Having footage can be important to hold officers accountable to the constitutional right of due process, she said: “It frustrates individuals’ ability to be able to vindicate their rights by depriving (them) of the most valuable, best evidence.”

The First Amendment includes deeper context, including the freedom to watch when the government acts, said Gunita Singh, a staff attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press: “Public interest in disclosure overweighs any interest that may exist in keeping the records private,” Singh said.

And as for immigration arrests specifically, the public has a strong interest, especially now when federal and state leadership views immigration as a national and state emergency and arrests are causing profound anxiety among immigrant communities. Florida has been under a state of emergency due to the “mass migration of illegal aliens to Florida” since 2023.

First Amendment protections also coincide with law enforcement accountability, especially in the context of immigration arrests, Singh said. ICE officers are carrying out an agenda promoted by the president, meaning that these are government personnel who should have their actions observed by the public and that access to the footage should be “ubiquitous.”

“The extraordinary power that we grant police officers, it just has to be matched with equally powerful transparency,” Singh said.

While the arrest affidavit’s description of the traffic stop aligns with the dash camera footage, there are details in the footage that add context, and questions.

Instead of asking Vazquez-Duran to call someone on speakerphone to translate, the trooper could have asked FHP for an interpreter, Trocino said. Also, included in the dash camera footage and not in the affidavit were two interactions with someone who advocated for Vazquez-Duran to the troopers.

An unidentified woman at the scene asked for one trooper’s badge number, but it’s not clear if the trooper gave it to the woman. He did respond, however, that she was hindering the investigation: “You could go to jail.”

It took less than 40 minutes for Vazquez-Duran to be pulled over, handcuffed and driven to the Leon County Jail. Her prison sentence ends Sept. 12, and soon after, so will her time in the United States.