More than 100 officers from six agencies fanned out across Florida before dawn, set up along South Florida highways, and spent three days pulling over drivers for routine traffic infractions. By the time Operation 9 wrapped up, the coordinated sweep had netted 249 illegal immigrants, many of whom had never once appeared in any law enforcement database.
Florida Highway Patrol officials call those individuals "ghosts." They have no records, no prior encounters with police, and no documented history in the United States. They are, in the blunt assessment of one FHP commander, simply here, and nobody in government can say who they are or what they intend.
The operation, the ninth in a series of enforcement sweeps since October, staged out of an FHP station in Broward County. Troopers, ICE agents, U.S. Border Patrol personnel, Broward Sheriff's Office specialty deputies, officers from the Florida Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco, and Florida State Guard members gathered before daybreak to begin the work.
The method was straightforward. Officers conducted routine traffic stops for driving infractions on South Florida highways. During the stops, questioning revealed the immigration status of the drivers or passengers. Those found to be in the country illegally were handcuffed, transported back to the Broward County staging point, patted down, and processed for transfer to ICE. They were offered bottled water and snacks while they waited in an air-conditioned holding area.
Lt. Ramin Sulaiman, assistant commander of the FHP Immigration Enforcement Section, described the scope of the problem his officers face every day on Florida roads.
"We have no records for them, no accountability of who they are."
Sulaiman went further, noting that the 249 captured in Operation 9 represent only a fraction of the illegal population moving through the state. The cumulative apprehension numbers don't capture the full picture, he said.
"But that does not include all the ghosts, meaning the people that have no encounters [with law enforcement]. They're just here."
It is unknown, Sulaiman added, whether these individuals carry criminal histories or harbor what he described as nefarious intentions. That uncertainty is the point. When more than a million people enter a country illegally and scatter to destinations across the map with no documentation and no tracking, law enforcement is left working blind.
Dave Kerner, executive director of the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, reported that nearly 10,500 illegal immigrants have been apprehended in Florida since March 2025. Operation 9 was the latest in a series of increasingly coordinated sweeps that began last October, with eight prior operations preceding it.
Sulaiman cited federal data showing that more than one million immigrants who entered the United States illegally during the Biden administration told authorities they were headed to Florida, and were released. That staggering figure provides context for the scale of the enforcement challenge Florida now faces, and for the "ghosts" who populate its highways with no paper trail and no accountability.
The federal government has stepped up its own commitment to Florida enforcement. Newsmax reported that approximately 200 Marines from Marine Corps Air Station New River, North Carolina, have been deployed to Florida to assist ICE with administrative and logistical tasks. The Marines are prohibited from direct contact with ICE detainees, but their presence frees up law enforcement personnel for field operations. Pentagon Press Secretary Sean Parnell said the support "provides critical resources to support ICE's mission, freeing up law enforcement personnel to focus on law enforcement tasks and missions." Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth approved the mobilization of up to 700 active, National Guard, and Reserve forces for immigration support.
Once detainees were processed and handed over to ICE, Nestor Yglesias, ICE's public affairs officer, explained the options. Detainees could accept an arranged flight home or remain in custody to await an immigration hearing. ICE determines whether the immigrant or the U.S. government pays for the flight.
Some detainees leave with a self-deportation incentive, a payment of up to $2,600 recently offered by ICE for voluntary departure. That taxpayer-funded incentive raises its own questions about the cost of a system that first failed to prevent illegal entry and now pays people to leave.
The contrast with jurisdictions that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement could not be sharper. While Democrats in New Jersey spent Memorial Day protesting outside an ICE detention center, Florida deployed more than 100 officers across multiple agencies to identify, process, and remove illegal immigrants from its communities.
The enforcement effort extends well beyond South Florida. Trooper Tony Golden, who covers six counties in Florida's Panhandle and normally focuses on commercial vehicles, offered a field-level assessment of what he encounters on the highways.
Golden said that based on his encounters, he believes the number of illegal immigrants in Florida is "astronomical." That word carries weight coming from an officer whose daily work puts him face-to-face with the traffic flowing through rural northwest Florida, far from the border, far from the ports of entry, and far from the political debates in Washington.
When pressed on allegations of racial profiling, a criticism that reliably surfaces whenever interior enforcement makes news, Golden was direct.
"We are enforcing the law. We don't pick and choose what we want to enforce."
That principle, apply the law as written, without carve-outs for political convenience, is precisely what separates Florida's approach from the sanctuary policies adopted elsewhere. Officers stop vehicles for driving infractions. Questioning during those lawful stops reveals immigration status. The process follows from there. No dragnet. No roundup. Traffic enforcement leading to immigration enforcement, conducted within the existing legal framework.
The Washington Times confirmed the scope of the multi-agency sweep, reporting on the 249 apprehensions during the three-day operation. The coverage underscores the degree to which Florida has become a model for state-federal cooperation on immigration enforcement, and a rebuke to jurisdictions that treat cooperation with ICE as a political liability rather than a legal obligation.
That cooperation requires funding, and the political fight over resources remains fierce. House Republicans have demanded a standalone ICE funding bill before voting on broader DHS measures, recognizing that enforcement operations like Operation 9 depend on sustained federal investment.
The stakes extend beyond immigration enforcement itself. The illegal population in Florida includes individuals with no records, no known history, and no accountability, the "ghosts" Lt. Sulaiman described. Some may be economic migrants with no criminal intent. Others may not be. The point is that without enforcement, without stops, without processing, no one knows.
And the criminal element within the illegal population is not theoretical. The Justice Department recently authorized the death penalty for three MS-13 members charged in the murder of an FBI informant, a reminder that violent criminal organizations exploit the same porous immigration system that produces "ghosts" on Florida highways.
Meanwhile, Democrats in the House dug in against ICE and Border Patrol funding even as the full DHS funding bill advanced. The disconnect between that opposition and the reality on the ground in Florida, where officers are pulling over vehicles and discovering person after person with no records, no documentation, and no legal right to be in the country, tells its own story about priorities.
Operation 9 captured 249 people. Nearly 10,500 have been apprehended since March 2025. More than a million told federal authorities they were headed to Florida and were released during the prior administration. The math is not complicated. Florida is catching a fraction of the people who should never have been released in the first place.
The "ghosts" Lt. Sulaiman described, people with no encounters, no records, no accountability, remain on the roads, in the communities, and beyond the reach of any database. Every one of them represents a failure that occurred long before a Florida trooper pulled anyone over on a South Florida highway.
Florida is doing the work. The question is why so many other states refuse to.