Letter to the Mayor

by Jenn Jones

This op-ed was originally written for the February edition of the Jax DSA Newsletter. Jenn Jones is a deputy of our chapter’s Communications Committee and a member of the International Solidarity Committee, Political Education Committee, and Mutual Aid Committee. This letter was written following Jacksonville’s Hispanic Outreach Coordinator being placed on leave for issuing a warning to her community about ICE being in the city on her personal Instagram, and comments as well on Mayor Donna Deegan’s general lack of action.

Mayor Deegan,

We are here today because silence has consequences. People in our city are being snatched from streets, from job sites, from classrooms. Families are being ripped apart. Children are watching their parents disappear. Students are being terrorized on their own campuses. And while this is happening, our city’s leadership has chosen procedure over people, optics over lives, policy over humanity.

This is not about public safety.

This is a Federal Deportation-Industrial Complex with a price tag of $170 billion over four years for border and interior enforcement.Their explicit goal is deporting one million immigrants every single year. $170 billion, is more than a yearly budget for all local and state law enforcement agencies combined across the entire United States.

Here in Jacksonville, you are perpetuating fear through our immigrant communities, when ICE sightings were reported and panic rippled through neighborhoods and one city employee did what you should have done.

She warned people to be careful. She told families to have a plan. She spoke to human beings who are scared.

And what was the response? Administrative leave.

Not because what she said was illegal. Not because what she said was untrue. Not because what she said was harmful.

By your own admission, Mayor Deegan, the Office of General Counsel confirmed nothing she said was illegal. You even stated that you did not disagree with the content of her message.

She was punished because she spoke without permission.

That is not leadership. That is control.

You claim you stand with Jacksonville’s immigrant community. Those were nice words, words without action. It means refusing to cooperate with systems that harm them. It means defending city workers who act to protect vulnerable residents. It means using the power of your office to confront injustices and not manage its optics for re-election.

Shame on Deegan. Shame on a city that silences empathy. Shame on leadership that protects policy over people.

We reject a Jacksonville where compassion is disciplined.We reject a Jacksonville where families are collateral damage.We reject a Jacksonville where billion-dollar deportation quotas matter more than human lives.

And in its place TODAY we will build something different.

We build solidarity. We build justice. And we will build a Jacksonville where working people, not corporations or politicians, decide our future.

Because WE ARE THE PEOPLE.

Mayor Deegan, history will not remember who followed the policy best. History will remember who stood up when it mattered.

The people are watching. The community is organizing. And we are not backing down.

This op-ed was written by a DSA member and does not formally represent the views of Jax DSA as a whole or its subgroups.

Ms. Yanira ‘Yaya’ Cardona was reinstated to her position on January 23rd, 2026.