Orange County Commission to Evaluate Termination of Federal Detention Deal Amid Rising Multimillion Dollar Fiscal Losses

Orange County officials review a federal agreement losing millions annually. Mayor Demings considers terminating the deal to house ICE detainees.

By: AXL Media

Published: Apr 20, 2026, 9:44 AM EDT

Source: Information for this report was sourced from Central Florida Public Media

A Decades Old Federal Partnership Under Review

The Orange County Commission is poised to debate the future of its Intergovernmental Service Agreement (IGSA) with the U.S. Marshals Service, a contract originally established in 1983. While the agreement has served as the framework for holding federal inmates at the local jail for over forty years, its fiscal sustainability has come into sharp focus. According to county officials, the deal was significantly expanded 15 years ago, but the financial terms have failed to keep pace with the actual operational expenses of the facility, leading to the current legislative review.

The Growing Deficit in Federal Inmate Reimbursement

At the heart of the controversy is a stark disparity between federal payments and local expenditures. The U.S. Marshals Service currently provides a reimbursement rate of $88 per day for each inmate, yet officials at the Orange County Corrections Department estimate the actual cost of housing a detainee is approximately $180 per day. This gap has transformed the federal partnership into a money losing proposition, as the county effectively subsidizes the cost of federal detention using local resources.

Calculating the Multimillion Dollar Financial Impact

While an official overall cost estimate was not provided by the county, independent calculations based on average daily head counts illustrate the severity of the deficit. Housing detainees without local charges cost Orange County approximately $2.7 million, while the federal reimbursement totaled only $1.3 million. Records from the corrections department show that the county received only $1 million related to ICE inmates last year, a figure that fails to cover the mounting expenses associated with the 75 detainees held on federal orders and the 186 others facing additional local charges.