Editorial written by Miami Herald Editorial Board.
Drive on South Florida’s busiest highways and you can see how underfunded and understaffed Florida Highway Patrol is.
Cars zigzagging at speeds that can easily exceed 100 mph. Impatient drivers illegally driving over traffic dividers to enter the express lanes on Interstate 95. Traffic impunity reigns in Miami-Dade and many parts of densely populated South Florida.
Troopers are outnumbered and cannot keep up.
Yet, our overworked and underpaid troopers will now get a new and high-profile assignment: helping the federal government enforce immigration laws, per an agreement Gov. Ron DeSantis recently entered into with the Trump administration.
FHP is in charge of making sure Florida’s highways are safe by enforcing traffic laws and investigating crashes. With 150 trooper vacancies, the agency has struggled to recruit and retain employees because of its meager starting salary which, at about $54,000, is the third-lowest among similar agencies in 49 states, the Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau reported.
While troopers can barely patrol local chaotic roads, they will, under this new agreement, also be empowered to perform federal immigration-officer functions. They will have the authority to interrogate people they suspect of being in the country illegally about their immigration status and detain them, as well as serving and executing federal immigration warrants, DeSantis said at a news conference last week.
A study by personal injury law firm Elk & Elk looked at fatal crashes along American highways from 2000 to 2019 and found that the deadliest mile — with 24 deaths — was along I-95, roughly between the Interstate 595 and Marina Mile Boulevard exits in Broward County.
South Florida was also home to three of the top 10 deadliest 10-mile highway segments in the nation, according to the study by the Seattle law firm. At No. 3 was I-95 between exits 18 and 27 in Broward, and the stretch between exits 7 and 16 in Miami-Dade came at No. 7. Combined, those two stretches accounted for 258 traffic-related deaths.
Of course, FHP is not the only factor for highway safety — road design and maintenance, along with driver education, also play a role — but these statistics make it clear that traffic accidents are probably a greater threat to American lives than migrants in the country illegally, the majority of whom do not commit crimes. Yet FHP has been historically underfunded.
Even the president of the union representing most Florida troopers has raised the alarm about assigning them more work related to immigration enforcement. The memorandum DeSantis signed specifically notes that troopers designated to do this work — it’s unclear how many of them there would be — would not get any additional compensation.
“We’re going to be the tip of the spear, with no additional funding,” William Smith, the president of the Florida Highway Patrol chapter of Florida’s Police Benevolent Association, told the Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau.
Even if the Legislature approves a funding boost for FHP this year, that money should be going toward hiring more people to enforce state traffic laws that so many drivers disregard — mainly speeding. Smith has told lawmakers that FHP needs about $30 million more each year to increase trooper salaries.
President Donald Trump was elected partly on his promise to fight illegal immigration, but in its frenzy to appease him and his base, Florida risks spending too much, too fast on projects that appear to be more about political optics than providing meaningful change for Floridians.
Certainly, undocumented immigrants who have committed serious crimes should be deported. Florida’s law enforcement agencies already hold undocumented inmates in local jails so immigration agents can pick them up.
