CLAY COUNTY, Fla. — Local immigrant advocacy groups are raising the alarm about a “driver’s license checkpoint” the Clay County Sheriff’s Office is planning to conduct in Green Cove Springs on Friday morning.
We’ve all likely heard of a DUI checkpoint, but no one Action News Jax spoke with in Green Cove Springs on Thursday had ever heard of a “driver’s license checkpoint” like the one planned in their city.
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The release from the CCSO, issued on Wednesday, announcing the checkpoint operation, instructs drivers to “have your valid driver’s license, current registration, and valid insurance card ready for review.”
A specific location for the checkpoint is not specified.
Reactions to the idea of stopping drivers on their way to work in the morning to check their license and registration were split.
“I think it’s ludicrous,” Carrie Mobley said.
“I think it’s a great idea that they’re trying to find some people that shouldn’t be driving on the roads,” Nate Harbath said.
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Despite our efforts to find locals with any memory of previous driver’s license checkpoints, CCSO claims, “Driver’s license checkpoints have been conducted numerous times, for years.”
New or not, the sheriff’s office acknowledged immigration issues could arise during the checks.
“If anything illegal comes up during it, whether it’s an outstanding warrant in County, out-of-county, immigration related, or anything else - it is handled as it comes and appropriately,” a CCSO spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
But immigrant advocacy groups suspect immigration enforcement is likely to play a major role at the checkpoint.
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“The State of Florida has already begun adding immigration screenings to other types of checkpoints, like agriculture inspections and things like that. So, it just kind of, to me, signals a pattern,” Maria Garcia with the Jacksonville Immigrant Rights Alliance said.
Garcia told Action News Jax that concerns around the checkpoint potentially being used to identify immigrants without legal status prompted the Alliance to put out a warning on social media, urging its members to avoid the area.
“We also encourage people to know their rights,” Garcia said. “It definitely feels like a pretext for immigration screening.”
But CCSO claimed the main focus of the operation is to ensure safe roads and to get habitual traffic offenders and reckless drivers off the road.
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The sheriff’s office also told Action News Jax that no ICE or DHS agents will be present at the checkpoint.
Still, Garcia argued the timing is suspicious, given CCSO had just accepted a $600,000 reimbursement check for its immigration enforcement efforts one day before announcing the checkpoint.
“The Clay County Sheriff’s Department has been monetarily incentivized to ramp up their immigration enforcement. And so, we say that that’s wrong. We shouldn’t be funding police departments by having them profile our neighbors,” Garcia said.
And those optics weren’t lost on Mobley.
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“What would be the need to do a license check, unless it’s just to see that somebody’s illegal in the area or in the country. And so, definitely, I have major concerns about that,” Mobley said.
Action News Jax did ask the sheriff’s office to provide some examples of past driver’s license checkpoints it has conducted over the past two years.
We were told to submit a public records request, which we did on Thursday afternoon.
So far, no records have been returned.
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