The Pinellas County Human Rights Board is exploring whether it has any legal path to investigate Sheriff Bob Gualtieri after revelations that his jail rebooked immigrants to sidestep a federal 72-hour detention limit. The move comes after a Pinellas County League of Women Voters request asked the board to look into the sheriff's rebooking policy, but the board's own authority over an independently elected sheriff remains an open question even as members begin exploring their options.
At the center of the controversy is a ProPublica investigation, as reported by Creative Loafing Tampa, which found the Pinellas County Jail rebooked immigrants after briefly releasing them into U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, resetting the clock on a rule requiring release within 72 hours. The jail rebooked at least 174 immigrants at least twice between July 2025 and July 2026, a volume the investigation found was unmatched by almost any other local jail in the country, according to ProPublica.
One case detailed in that investigation involved Soumia Bensalah, a French-Moroccan woman with a pending green card whose misdemeanor battery charge was later dropped. Bensalah had originally called police to report an alleged domestic assault, but officers booked both her and her spouse; she was then rebooked five times in December 2025, spending 26 total days in detention while repeatedly shackled and shuttled to an ICE facility across Tampa Bay, per the same investigation. Separately, a Brazilian immigrant detained without criminal charges filed a federal court challenge in July 2026 over her nine-day detention, prompting ICE to release her and attribute the extended hold to a procedural error.
A Sharp Rise in Extended Holds
The rebooking practice reflects a broader jump in how long Pinellas has held immigrants for ICE. Since President Donald Trump's second term began in January 2025, the jail held at least 157 immigrants for ICE longer than three business days in a single booking, compared with just five immigrants held over three days in the previous two years combined, the investigation found. Florida required all state jails to enter 287(g) agreements with ICE in 2025, a mandate the Florida Sheriffs Association confirmed that February when it announced all 67 county jails had signed on. A 287(g) agreement is a formal arrangement allowing local law enforcement to take on ICE duties, and under Florida law, a sheriff who scales back participation with ICE can be removed from office.
Pinellas was not alone in rebooking immigrants, but the scale set it apart nationally. Orange County's jail rebooked 559 immigrants before halting the practice in February 2026, according to Direct Message News, making Pinellas and Orange County outliers even within Florida — no other facility nationwide rebooked more than 10 immigrants over the same period, per that report.
Gualtieri's Long History Shaping ICE Policy
Sheriff Bob Gualtieri is not a bystander to this framework — he is widely regarded, per Creative Loafing Tampa, as one of the nation's leading experts on using local police to enforce federal immigration laws. At the start of Donald Trump's first term, Gualtieri proposed a method of detaining immigrants in county jails that later became a model for 287(g) agreements nationwide, while also holding the dual role of legal counsel and chief deputy for the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office at the time.
That 2018 proposal, which immigration and civil rights groups dubbed the Gualtieri memo in a joint report, drew criticism from five immigration and civil rights groups who said the workarounds it proposed were illegal. Gualtieri also helped write Florida's law banning sanctuary policies, and in May 2019 he helped design and launch the federal Warrant Service Officer program under 287(g), which deputizes local corrections staff to execute federal administrative warrants inside jails, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Florida Senate President Ben Albritton appointed Gualtieri in February 2025 to the eight-member State Immigration Enforcement Council, and during a June 30, 2026 meeting of that council, Gualtieri urged Florida police departments to more actively enforce their 287(g) agreements, noting that 109 of 272 participating agencies had not yet made an arrest under the program, according to WUFT News. Gualtieri also told the council that old ICE detention-request documents were unenforceable, per that council's 2025 discussion.
Faith Leaders and the Question of Board Authority
Brittany Leclair, pastor at First United Methodist Church of Pinellas Park, demanded answers about why the Human Rights Board was allowing what she described as inhumane care of neighbors, saying the group's concern centered on the care of immigrant siblings caught up in the jail's practices. Rene Flowers, a Pinellas County commissioner and chair of the Human Rights Board, said she will ask the sheriff's office to present to the board about the time frame for holding individuals, and plans to reach out to Gualtieri directly and consult county lawyers about the board's authority.
Flowers said she cannot compel Gualtieri to attend a board meeting but will invite him; as of publication, the sheriff had no designated representative at the board's meetings, and both Flowers and Gualtieri did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The board itself, which includes representatives such as the tax collector, supervisor of elections and property appraiser, usually investigates discrimination and wage theft on behalf of an individual who files a complaint. Chapter 70 of the Pinellas County Code of Ordinances limits the board's jurisdiction to discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodations, government programs and wage theft, leaving unresolved whether that authority stretches to a jail rebooking policy carried out under an elected sheriff operating within a state-mandated ICE framework.
