Jacksonville’s City Hall is officially in Tallahassee’s crosshairs again. Attorney General James Uthmeier announced Monday that his Office of Statewide Prosecution has issued a criminal subpoena to Mayor Donna Deegan’s administration, alleging there may have been a coordinated effort inside Jacksonville government to impede federal immigration enforcement. It’s the most aggressive escalation yet in the ongoing power struggle between Florida’s Republican leadership and Jacksonville’s Democratic mayor — and it comes with a familiar election-season undertone.

At the center of the subpoena is Yanira Cardona, Jacksonville’s Director of Hispanic Outreach, who recorded a video last month warning immigrant communities about ICE activity and claiming enforcement officers were stopping work vehicles across major corridors like Emerson, Beach Boulevard, and Atlantic. Cardona described what she called “targeting” of lawn care, construction, and HVAC vans — comments that quickly became political fuel. Uthmeier argues those remarks weren’t just misguided compassion, but potentially something more serious: interference. “If there’s evidence that her administration coordinated to impede immigration enforcement and harbor criminal aliens, we will hold them accountable,” he posted on X.

The subpoena demands all communications produced by or sent to Cardona between Jan. 2 and Jan. 16, including messages on city-issued devices and even personal devices used to conduct city business. Jacksonville’s Custodian of Records is scheduled to appear at the Attorney General’s Jacksonville office on Feb. 20. This is no casual inquiry. Uthmeier is signaling that prosecutors are looking beyond one staffer’s Instagram video and toward the possibility of broader coordination, including with outside NGOs, and he is openly raising the stakes.

Uthmeier has floated the prospect of racketeering charges if prosecutors uncover an organized effort to obstruct enforcement. He also invoked Florida’s anti-doxxing laws, suggesting that sharing ICE locations could place officers in danger or constitute criminal interference. “If you want to flag locations or details about law enforcement officers to impede operations, that is a crime,” he said, drawing a bright line that local governments do not get discretion on immigration cooperation in Florida. “Local officials have an obligation to assist federal law enforcement, not hinder it.”

The Deegan administration has responded with confidence, saying the city will comply with the subpoena and expects to be exonerated. But in Jacksonville, promises of cooperation and transparency land differently when subpoenas, rather than sunshine laws, are what often force documents into daylight. For years, residents, journalists, and watchdogs have faced long delays in records requests tied to downtown development deals, incentive packages, land swaps, and negotiations that seem to happen behind closed doors until the last possible moment. In this city, the public often has to wait, developers rarely do, and sometimes subpoenas are the only thing that moves faster than City Hall’s inbox.

The political optics are further complicated by the administration’s uneven approach to discipline and dissent. Deegan moved quickly in other cases to remove figures who challenged the status quo, including the high-profile decision to release JTA board member Megan Hayward after she raised objections and pushed back against prevailing leadership direction. Yet Cardona, whose comments have now triggered a criminal subpoena and statewide controversy, was only briefly placed on leave before being reinstated. The contrast has not gone unnoticed: some voices inside Jacksonville see a City Hall that is swift to sideline internal critics, but far more forgiving when controversy comes from within the mayor’s own political coalition.

Deegan has characterized Cardona’s comments as rooted in compassion toward “an immigrant population that is hurting,” and said the staffer’s only violation was of the city’s social media policy. City General Counsel Michael Fackler has also suggested no law was broken. But Deegan’s sharper rebuttal goes straight for Tallahassee’s motives, calling the subpoena a hyper-partisan fishing expedition while Floridians struggle with property insurance, housing costs, and healthcare.

This is bigger than one staffer, one video, or one subpoena. Jacksonville is becoming a testing ground for how aggressively Tallahassee will police Democratic-led cities and how far state leaders are willing to go in using immigration enforcement as both policy and politics. Uthmeier is positioning himself as the enforcer of Florida’s immigration crackdown. Deegan is positioning herself as the city executive refusing to be bullied into state-level political theater. Somewhere beneath the noise is the real legal question prosecutors now have to answer: was this simply a staffer speaking recklessly online, or something coordinated inside City Hall? The subpoena will tell the story. For now, Jacksonville is once again the stage.