National immigration policy under the Trump administration has left Florida law firms overloaded and overwhelmed — including in Alachua County.
From May to October of last year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Florida arrested over 14,000 people, an increase of 5,000 from the first five months of 2025. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis boasted about the initiative in his State of the State address Tuesday, saying “our people were safer” because of ICE’s partnerships with state and local officials.
Sasha Vasquez, with Vasquez Law Firm in Orlando, said the increase in immigration enforcement has led to an increase in cases for his firm.
On a daily basis, he said, there are many more calls about people being detained than before the Trump administration’s immigration legislation was put into effect. The increase is greater than anything he’s seen before, and he expects demand to continue growing.
He said immigration lawyers are at a disadvantage, as working within the legal system is already challenging, and the rise in cases amplifies that.
“We have the short end of the stick,” Vasquez said. “We’re often fighting an uphill battle.”
The fact of the matter, he said, is sometimes immigration lawyers cannot help clients in need. Nonprofit organizations who would help clients are also overworked, have lost funding and face new restrictions every day, Vasquez said.
“The immigration attorney community is tired,” he said. “We’re constantly working and trying to figure out ways to help our clients.”
Many towns and universities in Florida have entered 287(g) agreements, which allows local law enforcement officers to act as ICE agents. Detentions of suspected undocumented immigrants have increased over the past six months, according to immigration attorney Maria Batres with James Immigration Law in Gainesville.
About one in eight Alachua County residents are foreign-born, a ratio that’s increased slowly over the past few years. The county saw ICE arrests grow last year, with booking records showing nearly 30 people arrested in August 2025.
Batres said the Trump administration’s push for a daily quota of 3,000 ICE arrests, alongside a September 2025 Supreme Court ruling legitimizing ICE agents’ use of racial profiling, has increased the amount of cases brought to immigration lawyers.
While there has always been a steady influx of people seeking ways to lawfully bind their status or needing protection from ICE, she said, the increased caseload has largely consisted of families who call to say their relatives have been detained. Many arrests have even occurred during marriage petition interviews for green cards, she said.
Batres said James Immigration Law saw an uptick in cases around June 2025, and it has increased to around three more clients than usual per week since then.
Because of this, she said, immigration lawyers have had to turn clients in need away.
“Every law firm does have to weigh being able to represent as many people as they can, but being able to represent those clients in the best way possible,” she said. “So, we never want to take on an emergency case that we might not have the capacity for.”
Madeline Zavodny, a University of North Florida immigration expert, said as immigration enforcement has escalated, immigrants and their families have grown worried about being in possible noncompliance with immigration law. As a result, they’re increasingly reaching out to lawyers.
Conversations with other immigration experts and attorneys have made it apparent that immigration law services are overloaded, she said.
“I’ve heard that people are just stretched really thin,” Zavodny said. “They were already busy, and now they’re overwhelmed.”
It would not surprise her if attorneys she knew had to start turning clients away, she added.
Juan Caballero, the director of UF’s immigration clinic, said Alachua County immigration lawyers have experienced an influx of clientele, especially regarding detention cases. More frequently, immigration lawyers have had to challenge the government’s authority to detain someone, he said.
The problem is especially augmented for lawyers in Alachua County because few specialize in immigration law, and it often is not enough to cater to every case, Caballero said.
The atmosphere within the immigration law community after the numbers of cases swelled, he said, has been hostile and concerning to him.
“There’s just fear and apprehension on a scale that I have never seen before,” Caballero said.
Contact Angelique Rodriguez at arodriguez@alligator.org. Follow her on X @angeliquesrod.
Angelique is a first-year journalism major and the Fall 2025 graduate school reporter. In her free time, she'll probably be reading, writing, hanging out with her friends or looking through the newest fashion runway shows on Vogue.
