Students and Gainesville residents gathered outside the Gainesville Police Department on Thursday to protest a recent policy requiring officers to report individuals suspected to be living in the U.S. without citizenship, permanent resident status or a valid visa.
Protesters held signs and banners with phrases like “Stop ICE Terror” and “GPD policy = Racial Profiling.” Leaders with microphones led the crowd in singing and chanting phrases like “No justice, no peace; no racist police” to call out GPD’s new policy.
Students from UF chapters of the NAACP and Students for Socialism joined representatives of the Socialist Party of Gainesville in lining the sidewalks at the intersection of Northwest Sixth Street and Northwest Eighth Avenue.
Haley Pridgeon, a 21-year-old UF political science and African American studies senior and the external vice president of the Gator Chapter of NAACP, said the policy disproportionately targets people of color and encourages compliance in potential kidnappings.
“All people deserve dignity and life and freedom,” she said.
The policy, adopted Aug. 27, requires GPD officers to collect extra information, including a photo, from an individual if they are suspected to be undocumented.
Victims and witnesses of a crime are expected to do the same under the policy. However, if a person is actively under arrest and has an active warrant from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, officers must detain them and await ICE officials for further action.
The policy also states that features such as non-proficiency in English are not sufficient alone to suspect an individual as an undocumented person, but actions such as fleeing from police or other attributes that link an individual to criminal activity are sufficient.
Pat Farell, the president of the Democratic Progressive Caucus in Alachua County, joined Thursday’s protest because she believes the new GPD policy incentivizes racial profiling, she said.
“There's going to be people that will [be] emboldened personally to act like ICE [agents],” Farell said.
Fay Williams, another attendee and Farell’s friend, said she believes officers should not abide by the policy because it’s immoral.
“I would never snitch on my neighbors,” Williams said. “I would never snitch on my cousins, my brothers and sisters. This land does not belong to us. We're all undocumented.”
A 287(g) agreement, signed by most major city police departments and law enforcement agencies in Florida, including the UF Police Department and Alachua County Sheriff’s Office, allows officers to detain confirmed or suspected undocumented people.
But GPD hasn’t signed the agreement, so none of its officers are officially authorized to serve as immigration officers.
Despite GPD’s inability to detain people for immigration purposes, some are still concerned the department is assisting ICE.
Ethan Maia de Needell, a coordinator for the Gainesville Immigrant Neighbor Inclusion Initiative, accused the policy of allowing law enforcement to kidnap residents. He said he found the policy’s language vague, which could lead to racial profiling.
The policy requires officers to make arrests only when there is “reasonable suspicion,” which it defines as a connection to criminal activity and fleeing from officers. It states personal details like English fluency can only contribute to reasonable suspicion when they link “a person of specific description to particular criminal incidents.”
“[The policy will] make our community less safe overall,” de Needell said.
Katherine Canev, a 21-year-old UF biochemistry senior, said she and other students showed up because they feel GPD’s new guidelines are meant to unnecessarily target Gainesville’s immigrant community. As a daughter of immigrants from X countries, she said she feels it’s her responsibility to stand up for immigrants regardless of what documentation they have.
"I'm here today because our immigrant neighbors deserve to feel safe in the community where they belong,” she said. “Immigrants are welcome here."
Contact Sofia Garcia at sofiagarcia@alligator.org. Follow her on X at @sconsuelogarcia.
Sofia Garcia is a first-year journalism and political science double major at UF and serving as the student government reporter for Fall 2026. This is her first semester at The Alligator. In her free time, she enjoys listening to music, playing video games, or connecting with her friends and family back home in Miami.
