Florida deputy checks woman’s immigration status during arrest for having dog on beach

VOLUSIA COUNTY Florida WESH A Volusia sheriff s deputy checked the immigration status of a Colombian woman last Saturday in New Smyrna Beach before arresting her for having a dog on the beach in violation of a county ordinance The edict is out there and you have no other choice Sheriff Mike Chitwood commented We re not the bad guys We re just doing our job According to the arresting deputy s narrative of what happened Deputies contacted ICE and they advised they would place a detainer on Angie Sandoval-Padro at VCBJ advising she was in the United States illegally and would be under removal proceedings So she s under arrest for a dog on the beach the deputy can be heard telling Sandoval-Padro on his body-worn camera video ICE stated she has to be deported so she has to come with me The body camera video obtained by WESH shows another woman translated in Spanish for Sandoval-Padro and the man she was with on the beach She s sad because the kids and he reported if you can take him but not her the translator notified the deputy During the video the deputy is also heard saying I d much rather put drug dealers in jail but I have no choice It s a sad situation but you know what We have to enforce the law Chitwood explained We don t make the law Under the Trump administration s immigration crackdown and directives from Florida Gov Ron DeSantis Chitwood commented his deputy had to contact ICE even for a non-violent violation We ve had people drinking a beer on the beach It s an open container You got to go through the scrutiny Chitwood commented You can t issue a ticket if you don t know who you re issuing the ticket to Sir how can you do that without raising concerns about racial profiling WESH urged Chitwood That wasn t racial profiling he announced We have arrested people You people want to make an issue I want to tell you that right now Chitwood went on to say That s expletive and we re not going to wear that label Court records show Sandoval-Padro was able to post her bond and be distributed from jail Chitwood explained this isn t the first time ICE advised his deputies they d issue a detainer but then didn t follow through ICE has hours to drop a detainer on them he announced If they don t drop the detainer even though you explained us that the person is published So ICE doesn t come back and explain to us why they didn t file a detainer ICE has not responded to WESH s request for an explanation why they didn t place a detainer on Sandoval-Padro The sheriff declared law enforcement agencies are caught in the middle where in his words One party wants to wave everybody through the door and the other wants to throw everybody out of the country Every four years the ebb and flow switches Chitwood disclosed and the poor the poor bastards in the middle are the people in law enforcement trying to say can we have a little consistency here How are we going to do this Chitwood explained he s encouraging immigrants without legal status in his county to self-deport Why put yourself and your family through that that drama he declared The Volusia Sheriff s Office provided records showing between June through July deputies made arrests of people for violating the no-animals on the beach county ordinance