Mayor Donna Deegan speaks to reporters about her veto of a local immigration bill Tuesday at City Hall. | Mike Mendenhall, Jacksonville Today.
Published on June 24, 2025 at 9:50 pm
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Jacksonville City Council proponents of local immigration legislation that would have required city grant recipients to show the public funding was not aiding undocumented immigrants failed Tuesday to override Mayor Donna Deegan’s veto.
Council’s 8-7 vote fell short of a required two-thirds majority needed to nullify the mayor’s decision, hours earlier, to block Ordinance 2025-0138, introduced by beaches Republican council member Rory Diamond, from becoming law.
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In a news conference in City Hall before the council meeting, Deegan appealed directly to the bipartisan group of seven city lawmakers who voted against the bill when it passed on June 12 to hold their opposition for the override.
In prepared remarks, Deegan said the bill would create legal risk for the city, exposing Jacksonville to “costly lawsuits,” and would place city officials “in the difficult position of asking health care providers and nonprofits to determine immigration status, which is neither their role nor their expertise.”
The bill could have put grant funding at risk for organizations that provide services to immigrants in the country illegally, and would have required the city to create reporting processes that Deegan administration officials said would add unknown administrative expenses for the city.
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The mayor said council members who supported the measure couldn’t answer the question: “Who does the bill help?”
“This bill does not help our taxpayers. It doesn’t help our health care workers, our nonprofits, our first responders or our neighborhoods. This bill is not rooted in the common good. It is political theater disguised as fiscal oversight,” Deegan said. “Most importantly, this bill puts our city’s legal standing, public safety, public health and economy in jeopardy.”
The veto capped council member Diamond’s social media pressure campaign on Deegan leading up to her veto.
After the vote, Diamond said he plans to try to get the immigration grant oversight language inserted into the city’s 2025-26 fiscal year budget.
He told Jacksonville Today in a text message Tuesday night after the override failed: “We expected this vote.”
“By vetoing a bill I authored, as well as the members of city council who voted in favor with overwhelming support, to stop the use of taxpayer dollars from being spent on illegal aliens, Mayor Donna Deegan is making Jacksonville a sanctuary city under our noses,” Diamond said in a news release earlier in the day. “She has clearly made the choice to support law breakers over hard working Jacksonvillians, and prioritize illegals and criminals who put our city at risk over the great silent majority of Jacksonville.”
Deegan pushed back Tuesday on the narrative that her veto makes Jacksonville a “sanctuary city.” She noted that the state Legislature outlawed sanctuary cities for undocumented immigrants in 2019 and Jacksonville would not violate state law.
“Let me be as clear as I can about this. When families fear calling the police or the fire department, we are less safe. When people delay medical care out of fear, costs rise for everybody. When shadows are created, that is where danger and disease thrive. This bill does not save money, it multiplies harm,” she said.
The vote
Three council members had excused absences for Tuesday’s meeting – Joe Carlucci and Terrance Freeman, who supported the immigration bill, and Ken Amaro, who voted against it June 12.
City code requires a two-thirds majority of the members present to override a mayoral veto.
Here was the vote breakdown Tuesday:
Against the veto:
- Council President Randy White
- Council Vice President Kevin Carrico
- Nick Howland
- Will Lahnen
- Chris Miller
- Ron Salem
- Mike Gay
- Rory Diamond
To uphold the veto:
- Michael Boylan
- Matt Carlucci
- Tyrona Clark-Murray
- Ju’Coby Pittman
- Reggie Gaffney Jr.
- Rahman Johnson
- Jimmy Peluso
“Today our city stood up to the fear mongering and bully tactics popular in national media. So now, let us finally turn the page on these highly unnecessary bills,” council member Jimmy Peluso said in a news release. “This legislation doesn’t protect taxpayers or hold bad actors accountable; it just hurts people and spreads fear.”
In an emailed statement after her veto was upheld, Deegan again thanked the “bipartisan group of council members who voted to sustain my veto of the controversial immigration bill.”
Council members who supported the bill remained relatively quiet after its passage and didn’t speak publicly about Deegan’s veto.
Before approving the bill June 12, council members had carved out multiple exemptions to the reporting requirements as some grew wary of its effects on children, women and trafficking victims.
The Kids Hope Alliance, UF Health Jacksonville, undocumented active duty military, and health care services for pregnant women and other categories were removed from the bill’s enforcement mechanism.
Deegan also directly thanked outgoing Council President Randy White, the District 12 Republican who voted in favor of the immigration bill and against Deegan’s veto. The mayor called him “a statesman” and said, “Not one cross word has ever been said between the two of us.”
“Even when we’ve disagreed, we’ve always worked together to find common ground,” Deegan said. “That’s how we’ve pushed some big rocks across the finish line, like the agreement to build the new UF graduate campus Downtown. It’s because we put our love for the city first. I look forward to continuing this momentum with President-designate Carrico and the entire City Council.”
