Key West Mayor Dee Dee Henriquez joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the city.
A meeting to discuss the city’s arrangement with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will happen tomorrow at 5 p.m. in chambers.
Henriquez said, “I’m the one that called for the special meeting tomorrow, starting at 5pm. As everyone knows it was a 6-1 vote to terminate that contract (with ICE), and then the following day we received the letter stating that we need to be in compliance, and that we do need to sign this letter or there will be repercussions. My resolution is to give our city manager direction to signing the 287(g). My vote was not intended as a rejection of cooperation with ICE, nor was it an attempt to violate the Florida law. Rather, my decision was based on the guidance from our interim city attorney, who at that time had sent us a memo who determined that the existing agreement was not valid because it had been signed by our chief of police rather than the city manager. After that meeting, the next day, I did ask to speak to the chief of police and him and I spoke because I wanted him to know that I didn’t vote against him. I voted because the 287(g) was not valid per our charter. So I made that very clear, and did I support to vote to terminate the existing agreement. It was only because, like I said, it was only because it needed to be signed by our city manager and not our chief of police.”
The Attorney General is threatening to remove city officials and funding could be lost.
Henriquez said, “As the chief of police did explain, it’s no cost to our city. They have. There’s one or two or a few that have been trained or in the process of training, we would lose our funding at the federal and state level, and now in this letter, it’s stating that there could be removal and or someone being arrested. So I just want to make sure, I have no intentions in breaking state law or undermining lawful immigration enforcement. So I have to do the right thing. There’s a lot of people that feel that, by us signing it, it’s not the right thing. But if you’re illegal in our country, then you don’t belong here. You need to make sure you get in compliance. I’m sure we’ll even have more people at our city hall. We’ll have to check to see what the capacity level is and how many people can attend. So but I encourage everyone to come. They have a voice, they have an opinion and we’ll see what the will of the commission is.”
Wednesday is also the Bight Board meeting.
Henriquez said, “That starts at four o’clock here at City Hall. And then also on Wednesday, there’s going to be a ribbon cutting ceremony for the FDOT South Roosevelt Boulevard construction project, and that’s going to be at 10am. I know a lot of people were very happy when that project has been complete. It was a very long project, and thanks for everyone’s patience during that process. Then also Wednesday, we will be welcoming the Class of ‘43 Ambassador Class at City Hall at one o’clock. So the city manager and myself will be welcoming the new class, a Class of 43 and then on Friday, we have the early bird cleanup at the historic Key West cemetery, and that’s at 8am. We’re just putting one foot in front of the other. But I do want to just clear up something really quick. I just want everybody to know that I found out that there was two commissioners that were out because somebody had sent me something on Saturday stating there should be a story, maybe a journalist should write a story of why we’re having a meeting and why these two commissioners are not here. So that’s how I learned that there was not going to be two commissioners here at this meeting. So I had called our clerk on Saturday and said, is there, I mean, commissioners not going to be at the meeting? And she did tell me, oh yes, they’re not going to be at the meeting. I said, well, I think I need to know these things. So I just wanted to make it very clear that I was not aware that there was two commissioners that were not going to be there, but from my understanding, they’re going to be coming in by Zoom. One is out of the country, and the other one is on vacation. But when I guess the readers on Facebook when they found out, I actually should thank them, because that’s how I found out that two commissioners were not going to be physically here at the dais.”