A Candlelight Vigil in Ybor City Calls for an End to Local Police Cooperation With ICE
The Tampa Immigrants Rights Committee gathered at Centennial Park on Sunday evening, joining Day of the Dead remembrance to a call for local law enforcement to end its cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
YBOR CITY - Centennial Park held candles on Sunday evening as the Tampa Immigrants Rights Committee staged a vigil that combined Day of the Dead remembrance with a political demand: an end to local law enforcement's cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to WMNF's Monday roundup of Tampa Bay headlines, read in full by this desk.
Participants honored people who organizers say died because of ICE violence, WMNF reported - a characterization the organizers themselves attach to the deaths, presented here as the vigil's stated purpose rather than as independently confirmed findings. The pairing of remembrance and protest is a familiar Day of the Dead register in Ybor City, where the late-October and early-November observances regularly take public, communal form.
The vigil adds a Tampa voice to a live national argument over how closely city and county agencies should work with federal immigration enforcement - an argument that runs through sheriff's offices, jails and city councils across Florida. WMNF's report did not include a response from Tampa police or the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, and this desk is reporting the event as the station documented it: a Sunday-evening gathering in a public park, making its case in public.
