Miami-Dade said no to community IDs last year. This time, the police chief wants them

One year after balking at a proposal to create identification cards for undocumented residents and others who don’t have state-issued IDs, Miami-Dade commissioners have a second chance Wednesday to create a program that advocates say would help destigmatize a large swath of the county’s population.

Much has changed since the proposal died for lack of support on the board early last year.

Six of the 13 seats are filled with new members after the November election. The commissioner who sponsored the original failed legislation, Daniella Levine Cava, now serves as mayor, overseeing the police department. And Police Director Freddy Ramirez has switched his position and now endorses the program.

“I wouldn’t want anyone to not be able to get social services they need,” Ramirez said in a recent interview. “It’s a humanitarian issue, and that comes first.”

Ramirez didn’t attend the Feb. 19, 2020 commission meeting where the Levine Cava legislation was indefinitely deferred. The police agency’s top lawyer, Janet Lewis, told commissioners the new director “did not support the program [because] he was concerned it could cause some tension between police and community relations.”

Last week, Ramirez said he wasn’t familiar with the details of the Levine Cava proposal in 2020, a time when Carlos Gimenez was mayor. Ramirez had just assumed the top job at the county police department after the retirement of his predecessor, Juan Perez. He said he wasn’t asked by the Gimenez administration to oppose the proposal.

“I wasn’t involved in the conversations,” he said. “Once I...found out what it was, I was comfortable with it.”

Should the proposal pass, a non-government entity, such as a non-profit or a tag agency, would issue identification cards that Miami-Dade would accept for a number of county services, such as library cards. Accepting them would be voluntary throughout the county.

The outsourced arrangement is designed to prevent a public register of potentially undocumented residents, shielding card-holders from Florida’s open-records law.

Advocacy groups for immigrants say the cards would be helpful for undocumented residents, who often fear picking up a sick child from school because a parent must show identification. Undocumented residents also struggled during the COVID-19 pandemic to get free tests and vaccines for a lack of identification.

“When a person cannot identify themselves as living in Miami-Dade County in a respectful way, the fear of not showing up with the right form of ID shuts them out of testing and shuts them out of getting vaccinated,” said Commissioner Eileen Higgins, the new sponsor of the ID legislation. “They should be able to walk-up with a county ID.”

Backers of the cards also see them helping citizens who aren’t able or willing to get state identification, including residents experiencing homelessness. Pastor Chanel Jeanty of the Saint James Catholic Church in North Miami told during a commission hearing in May of people sleeping on the church’s steps overnight.

“For many of them, not having a local ID is a large reason why they struggle” to get back on their feet, Jeanty said. The cards “could build trust, and a better sense of belonging in our community.”

Skeptics on the commission raised concerns that the cards could be used fraudulently — with a holder posing as someone else to obtain something illegally, or using it as a first step toward identify theft.

Commissioner Rebeca Sosa said she wanted any identification-card program to be run by the county. “I am concerned about outside groups,” she said Tuesday. “Someone can take advantage... We have to be very careful with protecting people.”

Ramirez said a community identification card wouldn’t substitute for a state ID in an arrest situation, or when someone is being issued a citation. But he described the card as better than nothing, particularly when someone is being interviewed as a witness to a crime, a victim or experiencing a medical event that makes communication impossible.

“At least there would be something to work with,” he said. “Right now, if they are undocumented, there is nothing.”

This story was originally published June 2, 2021 at 6:00 AM.