The FDLE’s ‘Accountability Dashboard’ is meant to be used for reports against agencies—not individuals.
By Alice Herman/Suncoast Searchlight
Original Air Date: February 4, 2026
Host: The Florida Department of Law Enforcement set up a tip line in March 2025. It is meant for people to report state and law enforcement agencies for not complying with the state’s immigration laws. But months after it was created, only a trickle of responses flowed in—and many of them focused less on police than on the people next door. Alice Herman with Suncoast Searchlight reports.
Alice Herman: The “Law Enforcement Accountability Dashboard” asks tipsters to identify non-compliant law enforcement agencies. But records obtained by Suncoast Searchlight show many submissions hinge on allegations about neighbors and community members suspected of being undocumented. Often embedded in those complaints are accusations that local agencies are not doing enough about it.
One informant complained about his son’s bus driver being “foreign.” Three tipsters seemingly focused on individuals with whom they had personal quarrels. Two others complained of loud parties.
“These Haitian residents throw extremely loud parties 2 to 3 nights per week,” wrote a Lake Worth Beach resident. “The primary resident may be here legally, but we feel their party goers may not be.”
Many of the 17 tips complain local agencies had not done enough to crack down on undocumented immigrants in their area. Illustration using actual tip line submissions via Suncoast Searchlight
The tool was created in March alongside a raft of immigration enforcement policies that Gov. Ron DeSantis rolled out in 2025 to support President Donald Trump’s federal immigration crackdown. In a press release at the time, then-State Board of Immigration Enforcement Executive Director Larry Keefe said it was intended to “provide a direct channel for officers and employees to report any failure by their agency to comply with Florida’s immigration enforcement policies.”
Lauren Bonds, executive director of the National Police Accountability Project, said she had not heard of any other state to create such a tip line. It’s more common for law enforcement oversight agencies to seek information from the public about abuses and misconduct.
Suncoast Searchlight reached out to all of the tipsters who listed contact information in their submission. Those who agreed to speak on the record expressed a mix of feelings about the government’s crackdown on immigration and their own roles in it.
Eddie DelValle, an Orlando resident who alleged in a report that his neighbors were undocumented, told Suncoast Searchlight he believes his area is “infiltrated with undocumented people.” He insisted that local agencies have not gone far enough in assisting ICE.
Suncoast Searchlight illustration using FDLE tip line submissions and an iStock image by marchello74
Meanwhile, West Palm Beach resident Catherine Cominio told Suncoast Searchlight her feelings about immigration have evolved since she submitted a tip alleging a local landlord was renting to undocumented immigrants.
“When we think of ICE, we think of border control, but this is like Nazi Germany,” Cominio said, calling the recent killings by immigration enforcement officers in Minneapolis “executions.”
Fraser Ottanelli, a historian at the University of South Florida whose work has focused on labor and immigration, said the responses to the tipline were unsurprising. “It’s tragic, but it’s what these kinds of policies generate. They bring out the worst in us.”
Reporting for Suncoast Searchlight, this has been Alice Herman.
To read the full report, go to suncoastsearchlight.org/florida-fdle-immigration-tip-line-neighbors.
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