Volusia Sheriff Mike Chitwood revealed in an email to a citizen that he would lose his job if he didn’t cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and catch undocumented immigrants in Volusia County.
In December, the News-Journal made an information and records request seeking information on how much money the sheriff’s immigration taskforce is receiving for their efforts to assist ICE. His spokesman classified the newspaper’s request as a public records request and in January provided only a memorandum and a general order.
The documents from Chitwood notified deputies they were required to participate in the new data collection process in cooperation with State Immigration Enforcement Council and the State Board of Immigration Enforcement.
On Feb. 11, Chitwood, along with other law enforcement from the region, stood next to Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia touting that his agency has been actively catching undocumented immigrants, including 220 people in the last year. At the gathering it was reported the sheriff’s office received $334,262 for its immigration efforts.
Volusia sheriff said he would lose his job if he didn’t help ICE
In January, resident Jennie Erin Smith emailed Chitwood criticizing his provision of deputies and resources to execute a “racist, twisted deportation agenda that has nothing to do with keeping anyone safe.”
Chitwood replied by calling Smith an idiot and clueless.
In her email, Smith told Chitwood that she was once proud of him and even voted for him to become the sheriff, but that he now appears to be a new Mike Chitwood, even calling for New York City police officers to get away from a Muslim mayor and seek refuge in Volusia County.
In the back and forth email, Chitwood tells Smith that Gov. Ron DeSantis issued a directive that all law enforcement in the state must cooperate with the federal government in all aspects of the immigration enforcement, or face consequences that included losing his job.
“Failure to do so will result in being removed from office and a personal fine of $5,000,” Chitwood said in his response.
“Second, any elected official who doesn’t cooperate with the Federal Government or tries to impede their actions will be removed from office and fined $5,000,” Chitwood continued in his email.
After President Donald Trump took office in January 2025 and unveiled his mass deportation plan, Chitwood met with Hispanic leaders and the community at a church in Pierson, reassuring them he would not do ICE’s work and that he will only arrest undocumented people with criminal records or if they are detained in the commission of a crime.
PBS also portrayed Chitwood as pro-immigrant and a defender of undocumented immigrants in a 2018 news report. The sheriff made it clear to PBS then that he didn’t want his deputies seen as agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“If you’re a criminal, if there is a warrant out for your arrest, no matter who you are, we’re coming to get you. But we’re not going to be proactively going out and be immigration officers,” he said to PBS. “I believe that — just that’s not what our job as local state and county and municipal law enforcement officers is.”
Volusia sheriff awarded for catching undocumented people
Contrary to what he told PBS in 2018, Chitwood appears to have embraced ICE’s 287(g) program in which law enforcement agencies provide deputies as designated immigration officers to enforce immigration laws.
On Jan. 26, the right-wing organization American Constitutional Rights Union (ACRU), which gives awards to police departments that collaborate with ICE, gave Chitwood the ACRU’s Defender Award, which the organization said is a prestigious one.
The organization said the award is presented to “to law enforcement leaders who honor their constitutional oath to protect and to serve by working cooperatively with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to protect legal, law-abiding citizens from criminal illegal aliens.”
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Volusia sheriff’s email says he would be fired if he doesn’t help ICE
Reporting by Patricio G. Balona, Daytona Beach News-Journal / The Daytona Beach News-Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
