The North Roosevelt Boulevard Promenade, that palm-lined, tourist-attracting raceway alongside the car lanes, is shockingly empty these days. Same is true along Staples Avenue, another e-bike path across the island.
Gone are scores of locals on their e-bikes. They were easy to recognize. Destination-focused, wearing the branded uniforms of their local employers, ready for another day of working water sports, construction, landscaping, office, retail, healthcare and hospitality jobs. Same routine for the trip home at the end of the day.
Many are of Haitian, Cuban, Bahamian, Eastern European, Venezuelan, Nicaraguan and Guatemalan descent. Some are born-and-bred U.S. citizens or immigrants with legal status to be here. Some, I am certain, have lived and worked here for years without the requisite paperwork. They are our neighbors, our families, our friends or the strangers whose jobs serve the rest of us, often virtually invisibly.
They and their e-bikes have disappeared, lost to the fog of fear that has followed the escalation of ICE raids throughout Key West. Stay home. Keep your head down. Stay invisible. Especially if your skin is browner than an island suntan or if your English comes without Kenyon and Knott’s “Pronouncing Dictionary of American English,” which since 1953 has made “speak American” mean sounding more like your Midwest grandma and less like your hillbilly uncle.
You doth protest, do you? You want Immigration and Customs Enforcement to round up criminals and ship them off to the Krome Detention Center in Miami, or better still, deport them back where they came from, which for some would actually be here?
Totally with you on that, but, folks, that ain’t where we are. Nah, we’re in a black hole created by an authoritarian regime that’s decided it needs to arrest 3,000 people daily across the country and is delighted to manufacture all sorts of nonsense to distract us from what they’re up to. To meet those goals, the net is cast wide. Vicious criminal? Glad they caught you. Doing the right things to be “legal” and following all the rules (like showing up for your immigration hearing or renewing your visa)? These days you’re at risk, too.
ICE in Key West | Silence is not an option
Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis and his enabling lawmakers jumped with alacrity onto the “go get ’em” trawler. Local and state law enforcement are required to willingly act as ICE agents or face penalties. In late April, Operation Tidal Wave rounded up 800 across a state with population of 23.3 million in a multi-jurisdictional effort between ICE and local and state law enforcement.
DeSantis was giddy. In posts to social media platform X, the governor wrote: The operation is “an example of FL and (the Department of Homeland Security) partnering to deliver big results on immigration enforcement and deportations. … Florida is leading the nation in active cooperation with the Trump administration for immigration enforcement and deportation operations!”
Openly resist the craziness, as has Broward County Sheriff Gregory Tony, and the state bellows it’s coming with a lawsuit and plans to yank you from office.
“When it comes to immigration, I don’t care what country you’re from. If you commit a crime in this country or commit a crime in this county, I’m coming for you,” Sheriff Tony said.
“But what I refuse to do is take this notion that we need to be knocking on doors, or arresting children, or going into daycare centers or restaurants and taking and snatching people off the streets who have been paying taxes and contributing to this society in some positive form.”
Monroe County and Key West law enforcement have long traditions similar to Sheriff Tony’s and they appear to remain in place. I say that in the absence of official statements or rumors to the contrary, but neither am I politically naive. I am sure the chief and the sheriff must walk blurred lines between following the law and acquiescing wholesale to ICE.
Key West and the Keys have always had significant federal immigration presence simply because we are a historic U.S. gateway for Cuba, Haiti and the Bahamas. But ICE presence on the island today is noticeably more pronounced than even a year ago — and more aggressive.
Like the arrest of a woman on a bike who didn’t put her foot down and come to a complete stop at an intersection. Or the two longtime employees who didn’t show up for work last week. Or the man who was pulled from his home of many years without justification, all while neighbors vehemently protested and videoed the arrest. Or the 30-something worker who was rounded up, sent to Krome and now lives with an ankle monitor. (His grandmother forgot to file his papers when he was a toddler.) Or the loyal construction worker who left his e-bike chained to a stop sign and simply disappeared. Or the Trump-supporting owner of a local roofing company who lost a third of his crew to an immigration roundup.
You can’t live here and not hear those stories. But Key West has not lost its humanity, and behind the tragic stories are countless locals working to assist the unjustly targeted, protect them, give them sanctuary and support. It’s a disheartening, heartbreaking task and one they take on willingly. Because these are their neighbors, families, friends, coworkers and staff. .
Feeling helpless? Do something that’s both small and extraordinary: Say aloud to those you know: “This is wrong. This is not who we are nor who we want to become.” Do it privately if you must. Do it publicly as I am doing, even in the face of warnings from state and the federal governments that my protests, my words, are grounds for retaliation.
Silence is not an option. I want those e-bikes back on the boulevard — even if they are going too fast.
What can you do?
Two Key West residents are petitioning Key West City Commission to clarify its policies and practices on local law enforcement working with ICE. Hundreds of local businesses, churches, pastors and Keys residents have already signed the petition.
Ranger Ed and I have signed as has Key West Island News. My church (Peace Covenant Presbyterian Church) and its co-pastors are also among the signers.
Here’s who they are and why they’re doing this: Lucy Hawk and Heather Slivko-Bathurst are local citizens and friends who were deeply disturbed by the ICE activity taking place in front of Heather’s home. Their organizing started organically with warning signs around the community. It has quickly evolved to building community with like-minded individuals to demand accountability from our local politicians, spread awareness and information to our residents on social media, and support those KW residents who are terrified to leave their homes, regardless of their status.
Below: Read the statement and supporters as of 9 a.m., June 14, 2025.
Learn more
What’s happening inside the Krome Detention Center
The owner of this bike has a name. He is a European, a citizen of the Czech Republic, and has lived and worked in Key West for 5 and half years.
A few years ago, a young Czech citizen needed to straighten out his life and went to try his luck in the USA, where he had some contacts in Key West. He got a job, worked during the day for one of the many construction companies, and in the evenings in one of the better restaurants, where food is served on porcelain and the staff is dressed in white shirts and black pants. He had a rented two-room apartment, shared the rent with his roommates, paid his bills on time, lived orderly and did not cause anyone any trouble. He had something to brag about, the cost of living in Key West is not exactly low.
That’s how it went until Saturday, May 31. That day, he rode his bike to work at a construction site, wearing work shorts, a T-shirt, sneakers, everything splattered with paint. Suddenly, a police car with its lights on passed him and stopped him. Four hoodlums jumped out of a civilian car that stopped behind him, knocked him to the ground, handcuffed him, shoved him into a car, and took him to the local U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office. They allowed him to call his roommate, who then brought his passport to the office, and his family in the Czech Republic, saying that he had been arrested by immigration and would probably not be heard from for a few months.
The ICE website has a search engine for detainees, so after a few days it was possible to find out that he was in one of the detention facilities in Miami. For any further information (whether the case is in court and at what stage, how the deportation proceedings are progressing, etc.) and for any possible contact, it is necessary to know the number of the detainee, the Alien number, which can only be found by phone. His roommate from Key West, also a Czech but with a green card, tried in vain to call and find out the number several times. It was finally possible for a friendly native American woman to do it, probably the ICE officer did not want to talk to someone with a foreign accent.
It was expected that after the necessary standard official procedures were completed, which should take about 6-10 weeks, he would be deported to his country of permanent residence, i.e. the Czech Republic. Okay, American laws were violated, no discussion about that.
After about three days, the search engine showed that our person was in Texas. The same day later, that he was in one of the detention facilities in New Mexico(!).
This surprising fact led the family in the Czech Republic to contact the Czech Embassy in Washington, which responded immediately, registered the case, and offered any help, saying that it was necessary for the detainee to contact them himself. Which the detention facility must allow, and it was done.
There is an application that allows for connection from an external sentence with detained persons. After paying the deposit, you can receive calls from the detainee (not make calls) and send text messages. Call 5 USD/5 minutes, SMS 0.35 USD/1500 characters. The aforementioned facility in New Mexico provides this service.
So, after about a week, we managed to get in touch with our person. According to his brief account, he spent two nights in Miami with thirty other detainees on the bare ground in a room where not even everyone could lie down at once, then they were loaded onto a plane, flown across the USA to El Paso and then just a short distance to the existing facility. Things are relatively comfortable there, bed, food, shower. He is the only one there who does not speak Spanish and also the only European. The others are South Americans from various countries. Only the staff and about two “colleagues” can speak English.
It’s time to deal with practical matters. The only civilian clothes he has among his belongings are the ones he was detained in. He has had his indispensable contact lenses for four weeks now. His roommate sent him replacements, but they haven’t arrived after a week and a half. “They probably got lost, that happens.” His passport is not among his belongings. “It probably got lost, that could happen.” The Czech embassy has promised to promptly issue a replacement document, but an ICE official has to ask. So for now, we wait and see what happens.
Anyone who is a little more tanned, not blond, wearing work clothes and riding an electric bike is primarily a suspect and an object of interest for ICE officers. Detainees are treated on the edge of legality as second-class persons.
God save America
So much for your claim that Key West is NOT Liberal but is libertarian. Enforcing the sovereign border of a nation is not tyranny. Nearly every organized nation on the globe does so. Most are far more militant about enforcement than the United State is, or has ever been. Ask some of your e-bike riding pals to sneak their way into Canada and let me know how that goes. Better yet, have some folks who are not citizens of Mexico drop in to Mexico City without permission and see if they enjoy the welcoming committee.
When the last administration was deporting those illegally in the United States, we heard nary a word. Why the sudden outcry? Oh, I know. You put on your hypocrite hat.
Brilliant work. You were able to get people to think you wanted to talk about e-bikes, only to use that as a cover to vent your frustrations over illegal immigrants being arrested. I’m going to go out on a limb, and say you’re probably not a big supporter of Trump.