The Pinellas County Jail rebooked at least 174 immigrants at least twice from July 2025 through July 2026 to reset the federal detention clock, a ProPublica investigation published Thursday, Aug. 27, found.

The Pinellas County Sheriff's Office provides primary law enforcement services to unincorporated Palm Harbor and the contract city of Dunedin. Sheriff Bob Gualtieri oversees the jail.

Under federal rules, county jails that do not meet ICE detention standards generally must release ICE detainees in less than 72 hours. Pinellas had a special contract that allowed it to hold people for up to three days through June. Instead of releasing detainees when the clock expired, the jail briefly moved them into ICE custody and rebooked them within hours, ProPublica reported.

The clock reset each time.

One Mexican woman was rebooked 10 times and held for 26 days total. Former ICE officials and legal experts said the practice was a deliberate attempt to evade federal rules and ICE detention standards. "There's no argument that this is a lawful detention," Jennifer Chacón, a professor of law at Stanford University, told ProPublica.

Gualtieri was re-elected without opposition in 2024. He serves on the Florida State Immigration Enforcement Council, and state authorities have described him as an expert on local police collaboration with ICE. He helped design a model 287(g) agreement, the formal cooperation pact local agencies sign with ICE.

ProPublica detailed the case of Soumia Bensalah, whose Polk County battery charge was later dropped. After she called police to report that her husband had allegedly assaulted her, officers booked both of them on battery charges. She was rebooked into the Pinellas County Jail five times on behalf of ICE. Each time, officers shackled her before bringing her to a cramped hold room at an ICE office, according to the investigation.

Since President Donald Trump's second term began in January 2025, the jail held at least 157 immigrants for longer than three business days in a single booking, ProPublica's analysis found. In the two years prior, only five immigrants were held that long.

After a Brazilian immigrant who had not been charged with a crime challenged her nine-day detention in federal court in July 2026, ICE released her, calling the jail stay a "procedural error," according to ProPublica's findings reported by Creative Loafing Tampa Bay.

ProPublica reported the rebooking practice appeared to cease in July 2026. The report did not identify a reason for the apparent change.

Cpl. Jamie Miller, a Pinellas County Sheriff's Office spokesperson, told ProPublica that the facility holds people for ICE for only up to 72 hours before releasing them. The sheriff's office declined further comment after ProPublica shared its findings and declined requests for an interview with Gualtieri. Creative Loafing Tampa Bay reported that the sheriff's office did not respond to its separate request for comment.

DHS said ICE was "NOT breaking any laws" by making custody determinations based on bed space, while legal experts disputed the lawfulness of the rebookings.

Gualtieri has pushed for deeper local-federal immigration enforcement ties. In summer 2025, Gualtieri joined a group of Florida sheriffs who proposed that ICE use unused jail beds around the state and that Florida law enforcement transport detainees.

In a 2025 email obtained by Creative Loafing Tampa Bay, Gualtieri told Pinellas police chiefs they were required to "do certain things" regarding immigration enforcement or face removal from office by the governor. Within days, all of the county's police chiefs signed 287(g) agreements, even though police departments were not required to enter the voluntary program, Creative Loafing reported.

Single detentions exceeding 72 hours, which legal experts said can violate federal detention requirements, began to increase even after the rebooking practice stopped, ProPublica reported.