Jacksonville rallies to stop deportations: “Enough is enough”
Jacksonville, FL – Hundreds rallied at the intersection of Southside and Beach Boulevards, a vital hub of Jacksonville’s immigrant community, on Saturday, April 26, heeding the call of the Jacksonville Immigrant Rights Alliance (JIRA) and a coalition of faith and grassroots organizations.
Standing before a sea of hand-painted signs and chanting crowds, Vanessa Alvarez of JIRA opened the rally by stating, “Our communities are under attack.”
“Right now, as we speak, ICE is tearing families apart,” Alvarez said. “But we are here to say enough. Not one more deportation. Not one more family destroyed. No more business as usual while our people suffer.”
The rally centered around three urgent demands: an immediate halt to all deportations, justice for Kilmar Abrego Garcia and all immigrants facing detention and exile, and an end to local police collaboration with ICE.
Representatives from groups including Riverside Church, the Jacksonville Community Action Committee, Florida Rising, Students for a Democratic Society, the Jacksonville Palestine Solidarity Network and others addressed the crowd.
Speakers laid bare the violence behind the headlines, saying that deportations are not bureaucratic processes, they are acts of state terror. Every day, ICE agents rip people from their homes, workplaces and schools, often based on flimsy pretexts or racial profiling.
Under President Donald Trump’s current administration, raids have escalated dramatically, sweeping up asylum seekers, students, veterans and even U.S. citizens like 20-year-old Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez, wrongfully jailed in Tallahassee, despite presenting his U.S. birth certificate in court.
Speaking about Lopez-Gomez, Monica Martinez, another organizer with JIRA, stated, “Just based on his name, just based on his looks, just based for simply living.”
A central figure lifted up during the rally was Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a young man deported to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison under ICE’s false “gang affiliation” accusations, a fabricated charge routinely weaponized against Black and brown immigrants.
Abrego-Garcia’s story, along with those of other criminalized immigrants and activists like Mahmoud Khalil, served as a chilling reminder that the U.S. immigration system functions not to protect, but to disappear those it deems disposable.
The rally exposed how local law enforcement fuels Jacksonville's deportation pipeline through 287(g) agreements – programs that use local police to enforce federal immigration laws. From city streets to college campuses like the University of North Florida, officers now weaponize minor infractions like broken taillights or parking violations to funnel immigrants into detention.
Activists called out the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office (JSO) for its $630 million budget and denounced the city council's recent passage of Ordinance 2025-0147, a draconian law that criminalizes undocumented existence by imposing up to 60 days in jail for “unauthorized aliens” and mandates police collaboration with ICE through mobile fingerprint scanners.
The ordinance, pushed by Councilman Kevin Carrico and backed by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, effectively deputizes local officers as immigration agents, incentivizing racial profiling while diverting money away from taxpayers to fund surveillance tools already used to target Black and brown communities.
“This is why it is essential for us all to stand together. Every atrocity, and act of oppression and tyranny, is a test to see how tight they can tighten their fist without retaliation,” said Gonzalo Kleinick of JIRA. “We must stand together. We must support one another.”
As the rally closed, the energy remained fierce and determined. Speakers urged the crowd to keep organizing, keep resisting, and keep fighting for a city where immigrants are not hunted, but celebrated.
JIRA and its allies called on everyone to mobilize again for International Workers’ Day – May 1, 6:30 p.m., at the Duval County Courthouse – to continue the fight against deportations and for immigrant justice.
“They want us to be afraid,” Alvarez said, in closing. “But we are not afraid. They want us silent. But we are loud. They want us to give up. But we are unstoppable.”
“The people united will never be defeated,” the crowd chanted.