Why I want to support professional policing and end terror in our communities

David Silverberg
Advocacy

A masked ICE agent seizes Gilberto Garcia Cruz in front of his home in Hendry County, Fla., on April 10, 2026. Cruz, a 26-year-old DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) recipient with autism, was ultimately released. (Image: Gulf Coast News)

May 14, 2026 by David Silverberg, candidate for Florida Senate District 28

Not long after Sept. 11, 2001, I had the honor to be invited to serve on the board of the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police. I was editor of a homeland security magazine in Washington, DC and “homeland security” was something new.

In my year on the board I tried to contribute some expertise in public communications and knowledge of the emerging discipline of homeland security.

My contribution was modest. But far more valuable for me was the insight I gained about policing from a command perspective. The veteran chiefs I worked with were professional, disciplined, prudent, completely committed to the rule of law and its impartial, sensible enforcement. I learned about their concerns with resources, retention, recruitment and community relations. I emerged from this experience with great respect for their mission of serving and protecting the public and the challenges they faced.

I’m reminded of that experience during this, National Police Week.

Sadly, that experience also makes me aware of just how far America and Florida have strayed from the ideals of those chiefs—and there’s one “law enforcement” agency in particular that’s guilty of this deviation.

I don’t know how any self-respecting, professional, experienced law enforcement officer can look at the agents of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) directorate of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with anything other than horror and disgust.

Where professional police officers are open and transparent in their operations, ICE agents are secretive and opaque. Where professional police officers follow evidence to build a case that will win in court, ICE officers seem to detain anyone they want, mostly on the basis of race. Where professional police officers are paid by the communities they protect, ICE officers are mercenaries lured by bonuses (whose terms keep changing). Where professional police officers go through an academy and receive extensive, constantly updated training, ICE recruits walk in off the street and are barely trained at all. Where professional police officers operate according to the law, executing searches sanctioned by judicial warrants for probable cause, ICE officers perform warrantless, unsanctioned searches (and please spare me any arguments about “administrative” warrants, which are baloney, to use a polite term). Where trained, professional police officers understand the gravity of use of force and try to use it sparingly, ICE agents have proven trigger-happy and even murderous.

Even their appearance is an affront to professional policing; masked, motley, ununiformed, unidentifiable, with a bunch of random equipment clipped to their vests, they’re more like a bunch of drunken bros out for a hunting expedition than a cohesive, disciplined force.

What’s more, when its seizures are subject to judicial review, ICE has an astounding 90 percent failure rate in over 10,000 cases its agents have brought to court, what Politico called “a staggering rejection of a core piece of Trump’s immigration agenda.”

It’s long past time for the state government to take a hard look at ICE operations in Florida and the nature and extent of local law enforcement immigration operations.

My name is David Silverberg and I’m running for the Florida state Senate in District 28, which consists of Collier, Hendry and eastern Lee County.

If elected, I intend to do whatever I can to take that hard look at ICE and state immigration operations. Policing should be open, honest, legal and impartial but that’s not what’s happening in Florida now. The terms and extent of local and federal immigration enforcement should be clear and transparent to everyone. Local governments shouldn’t be bullied and intimidated into participating in supposedly “voluntary” cooperation agreements. Nor should agreements between local law enforcement departments and ICE be cloaked in secrecy, which ICE is now attempting to do.

Floridians—immigrants and long-time citizens alike—shouldn’t be terrorized by a masked, undisciplined, paramilitary, mercenary mob unrestrained by legal limits or constitutional protections. The state should not be using taxpayers’ money to pay for immigration operations that are the federal government’s responsibility.

Nor should Florida be stuck with the costs of a blindly bigoted attempt to purge the United States of its Hispanic population, whether migrant or citizen, of which ICE is the chief tool.

That includes state support for facilities like Alligator Alcatraz, the concentration camp in the Everglades.

As this is written, it appears the camp may be shut down. It certainly should be: it’s performing a federal function that costs Florida taxpayers, who can’t afford gas for their cars or groceries for their tables, a million dollars a day. What’s more, despite the optimistic utterings of Gov. Ron DeSantis, it seems that President Donald Trump will welch on any promises to pay for it, the way he has welched on all promises all his life. Florida is unlikely to be reimbursed for the exorbitant costs of this sinkhole in a swamp.

The perversion of ICE and the whole homeland security enterprise is personally painful to me.

I was in Washington, DC on 9/11 and heard American Airlines Flight 77 strike the Pentagon.

With that and the threat to America as an impetus, I turned my journalistic focus from covering Congress to covering the newly-formed Department of Homeland Security. I covered its organization, its development and its sometimes awkward steps toward cohesion and effectiveness. I had the opportunity to personally interview the first three secretaries of homeland security: Tom Ridge, Michael Chertoff and Janet Napolitano; all fine, qualified and very patriotic individuals.

Whether Republican or Democrat, the secretaries and the people who served DHS had one purpose and mission: to protect Americans and their homeland.

That included ICE, which incorporated the old Immigration and Naturalization Service and US Customs Service. The whole purpose of ICE was to prevent bad people and bad things (the Customs part) from entering the United States.

ICE was doing its appointed job when Donald Trump became president for the second time. But he and his first Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, decided to turn it into something else. They wanted to use it to purge America of all immigrants and especially those of Hispanic origin. They made no secret of this.

To do it, they have turned ICE into a paramilitary tool of terror. Its job now is not really to find criminals but to terrorize whole communities and drive out populations whom Trump hates for whatever irrational reason obsesses him. Now ICE is unbound by rules of evidence, court procedure, due process, citizenship protections, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the simple, decent principle that the innocent should never be punished for crimes they didn’t commit.

This is a perversion of the mission of ICE and homeland security. In its current form ICE is not a form of protection, rather it’s a form of state-sanctioned domestic terrorism—exactly what DHS was created to prevent.

What is more, as a politically-driven, unaccountable and unrestrained force, ICE has the potential to interfere in our elections and democratic governance, going well beyond any credible enforcement mandate it may claim and threatening our democracy.

This does not belong anywhere in America and especially not in Florida. Floridians should feel safe and protected by legitimate, professional law enforcement, the kind they get from their local police officers, led by 67 county sheriffs who are elected constitutional officers accountable to the people who elect them.

As I stated earlier, if I’m elected to the Florida Senate for District 28, I intend to take a hard look at ICE, its operations and its relationship to our communities as well as the agreements that were sometimes forced on our cities and counties—and I always intend to support legal, legitimate, professional policing in any way I can.

I hope you agree with me. If you do I hope you’ll vote for me for the Florida Senate on November 3rd.

Together, we can make life in Florida safe, happy and fear-free.

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