In Key West, riding a bike can make you an ICE target. Police chief says they're just doing traffic stops

Bicycles are the main transportation for workers on this tiny, tourism-dependent island. Now many ride in fear of ICE stops

In Key West, people riding bikes to work have become targets of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, according to eyewitness accounts, videos and the island’s leading immigration attorney.

“It’s actually happening,” attorney Amanda Velazquez told me Thursday. “I had one this morning. It’s a routine thing.”

Even with all the legal paperwork in place — a valid driver’s license and an asylum hearing on the calendar set for a couple years from now — her client was still taken into custody.

“Probably a half a dozen of my own clients have experienced that in the last couple of months,” Velazquez said. “It's almost scripted. They're riding their bike to work, and they get stopped by an unmarked car, and mind you, these are people who have valid employment authorizations.”

ICE agents on their own are in unmarked white vehicles pulling bicyclists who appear foreign-born over, Velazquez said.

“They get stopped for no probable cause, in my opinion,” Velasquez said. “Because what would be the probable cause? Somebody's riding their bike to work. I mean, honestly, give me a break. So they get stopped.”

The bicycle and pedestrian bridge on Staples Avenue is a major thoroughfare for workers riding to their jobs. Locals have placed this warning sign on the bridge.

Are Key West Police partnered up with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement?

Of course they are. A memorandum of agreement — a 287 (g) Task Force Model which refers to the Immigration and Nationality Act — was signed on March 4, 2025 by Key West Police Chief Sean Brandenburg.

That’s been widely reported and the agreement is publicly posted on ICE’s website. Click here to read the KWPD and the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office agreements with ICE.

But Key West police say they’re doing their jobs — while ICE is doing theirs. Key West police aren’t out looking for undocumented immigrants, they said. But if ICE agents stop by during a traffic stop, that’s their choice.

“We’re not doing anything other than enforcing bicycle laws,” Police Chief Sean Brandenburg told me Thursday. “If ICE is there and they find something out of the ordinary they take over.”

KWPD hasn’t changed how it patrols bike and e-bike traffic, the chief said.

E-bikes in Key West are a polarizing local issue, by the way. On one side, it’s the most affordable form of transportation if you live on Stock Island and need to get to your job on Duval Street.

Yes, it’s a 1-by-3-mile island but you try walking it in 95-degree heat, or forking over $14 per Uber ride. KWPD for years has devoted police patrols to focus on bicyclists.

That hasn’t changed due to the ongoing immigration crackdown, Brandenburg told me.

“The number of bicycle stops we make remains somewhat consistent,” Brandenburg said. “We’re just trying to keep the streets safe.”

It’s common practice for officers to pull over if they see any law enforcement agency making a traffic stop, the chief told me, especially if it’s a lone officer at the scene.

“If a deputy sees one of my guys pulled over, it’s law enforcement helping law enforcement,” Brandenburg said.

Key West, a worldwide destination, has a single economic engine: tourism.

A woman’s bicycle remains locked at the corner of Staples Avenue and 8th Street, a week after my neighbors said ICE took the rider into custody and then secured her bike to the stop sign.

The city is also a tiny blue dot in Monroe County, which runs as red as the rest of Florida.

“Stopping someone to tell them they didn’t stop at a stop sign shouldn’t mean that person gets deported back to Venezuela,” a sailing charter manager told me.

She also sees the impact on businesses, many of which employ foreign-born workers from a number of countries and with various documentations from citizenship to visas.

Several business owners told me workers are afraid to go to work.

“I know multiple people, who are legal, who won’t go to work,” one texted me today. “People with papers being arrested is so terrifying.”

Locals who spend a lot of time driving or who live on the Staples Avenue bike path said they’ve noticed fewer bicyclists on the streets over the past two weeks.

A friend who drives for Uber and Lyft said on June 7, he couldn’t believe how few bikes he saw.

“I only saw 3 e-bikes and one was on the ground while its owner was being questioned by ICE agents and KWPD,” the ride share driver said. “After getting used to the huge number of bikes and e-bikes in Key West, this was spooky.”

“They’ve instilled such fear in the communities that are vulnerable there’s nobody to pull over,” she said. “They’re not going downtown to go to work,” she said. “It’s started to affect business downtown. Business owners are starting to notice.”