Enterprise FL Squatters Arrested, Drugs and Trash Found

Three people were arrested this week after Volusia County deputies tore down an illegal camp hidden on a rural stretch of private property off DeBary Avenue in Enterprise, uncovering methamphetamine, fentanyl, and hundreds of pounds of human waste and garbage the occupants had left behind. The land belongs to an 80-year-old woman who lives out of state and had been trying to sell the parcel, only to find it overtaken by campers who told deputies they never had her permission to be there at all.

According to the Volusia Sheriff's Office, the three squatters claimed they had been permitted to live on the land by someone identified only as “Gator.” Deputies gathered more than 500 pounds of trash during an initial weekend sweep of the site and estimated roughly 5,000 pounds of accumulated refuse remained scattered across the property, along with buckets and bottles of human waste. As FOX 35 Orlando first reported, all three occupants were arrested after the discovery.

Drugs, Trespassing and a Nuisance Charge

Deputies also recovered pills, methamphetamine and fentanyl at the campsite, leading to charges against the three occupants for drug possession, trespassing, littering and maintaining a public nuisance, per the sheriff's office. Enterprise is an unincorporated community in southwest Volusia County near Deltona, and the case adds to a string of aggressive property-crime sweeps under Sheriff Mike Chitwood, who has built a reputation for publicizing bodycam footage and social media posts documenting deputy crackdowns.

The scale of the dumping matters legally, not just logistically. Florida's litter law classifies dumping that exceeds 500 pounds or 100 cubic feet in volume, or that involves raw human waste, as a third-degree felony carrying up to five years in prison and potential property forfeiture, according to Florida statute. Lesser amounts of non-commercial dumping, between 15 and 500 pounds, are typically prosecuted only as a first-degree misdemeanor. Separately, criminal trespass on land other than a structure, after notice has been given, is generally a first-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail under Florida law, though it can be elevated when tied to another felony or significant property damage, per FindLaw's summary of the statute.

A Statewide Camping Ban Meets a Local Shelter Shortage

The Enterprise case unfolded against the backdrop of Florida's House Bill 1365, a 2024 law that bars cities and counties from allowing public camping or sleeping on public property and rights-of-way. The law also lets residents and business owners sue local governments that fail to clear public encampments, a provision that has pushed unsheltered people off sidewalks and public land and, in some cases, onto private parcels like the one off DeBary Avenue.

Volusia County's main shelter option is the First Step Shelter in Daytona Beach, which operates with roughly 60 beds to serve a county of more than 550,000 residents, according to ClickOrlando. That gap between shelter capacity and the county's population helps explain why wooded, rural properties in places like Enterprise keep turning up as informal camps, even as landowners like the 80-year-old seller are left to shoulder the cost and legal risk of clearing them out.

Part of a Broader Pattern in Central Florida

Southwest Volusia County has seen heavy law enforcement activity through 2026, including a SWAT standoff tied to a murder suspect at State Road 415 and Howland Boulevard in nearby Deltona this month. Unmanaged encampments elsewhere in the region have also turned dangerous: in April, a Palm Bay man was arrested after an encampment-linked fire burned five acres of brush near commercial businesses in Brevard County, and authorities in Leesburg searched for a suspect after a fatal shooting near a homeless camp the same month.

Those cases, along with the Enterprise sweep, illustrate a recurring tension across Central Florida: state mandates that push people away from public land, a shortage of shelter beds to house them, and private landowners left to discover, clean up and prosecute the fallout on property they never intended to share.