City: Renovations on City Hall Slowed By Immigration Arrests

In Brief:

🏗️ Construction Delays at Synovus Bank Building: The renovation of the old Synovus Bank Building into Valparaiso’s new city headquarters faces over a year of delays due to logistical issues and recent labor shortages.
🚨 Impact of Immigration Roundups: City Administrator Carl Scott attributes the latest slowdown to immigration enforcement actions in Northwest Florida, which have led to the loss of construction crews, including legal workers, due to arrests and self-deportation.
🔍 Local Jail Data: Okaloosa County reported processing 92 inmates for ICE in a 38-day period, while Walton County deferred inquiries to ICE, highlighting the scale of recent immigration enforcement operations.

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The old Synovus Bank Building in Valparaiso that was supposed to become the City’s new headquarters has been delayed by more than a year.

They are expecting another slowdown.

While some of the awaited improvements seem to be logistical to city leaders (Where is the elevator car? HVAC Flooding caused the removal of a bathroom on the ground floor) City Administrator Carl Scott blames the latest round of delays on the immigration roundups sweeping northwest Florida.

“We’re fighting labor problems. You know, as long as the Florida Highway Patrol and Sheriff’s Office is parked outside our construction sites, they’ll keep taking off our workers,” Scott said, “We’re finding we’re fighting the elements there. So, we have a little trouble with keeping folks able to work. You get fired up and going and the next thing you know, everybody’s now at Alligator Alley. You have to start over.”

Scott explained that the round ups started about a month ago and have cost the city’s contractors several crews of workers, including a concrete crew and a framing crew. This includes, he says, workers in the country legally. “You get a choice, you know, either self deport or you sit in jail for the next month or six months waiting for a hearing. Most of them will self-deport. Even if they are legal, they don’t want to sit in jail for six months.”

“I don’t know if that’s true or not,” Scott added, “I’ve heard that through the grapevine.”

Arrest Reports

Earlier this year, an immigration enforcement operation in Northwest Florida touted by the Governor’s Office detained more than 200 undocumented immigrants.

We asked The Okaloosa County Commission and Walton County Sheriff’s Office, the two government agencies that oversee local jails where undocumented immigrants are held for Immigration and Customs Enforcement after an arrest, how many people they held since August 1, 2-25.

Okaloosa County’s Board of County Commissioners told us they held and processed 92 inmates in the 38 day period we asked about.

Walton County’s Sheriff’s Office told us that we needed to go through Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s public information apparatus. We’ve reached out to them for information and will update this story if they respond to our request.