TALLAHASSEE, FL — Today, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a sweeping anti-immigrant bill package into law– diverting nearly $300 million of our taxpayer dollars to support Trump's cruel and inhumane mass deportation agenda.
These new laws have numerous dangerous and potentially unconstitutional provisions designed to instill fear in our communities and incapacitate our economy.
A few of the harmful provisions include: repealing in-state tuition for undocumented Floridians, increasing criminal penalties and denying bail for undocumented immigrants arrested for certain offenses, creating an unprecedented State Board of Immigration Enforcement funded with hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to force local law enforcement's maximum participation in Trump's mass deportation agenda, making it a state crime to enter Florida after entering the country without “examination or inspection,” and mandating the death penalty for undocumented immigrants convicted of a capital felony.
Bacardi Jackson, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, stated the following:
“Florida leadership has brazenly passed a series of destructive laws that will compromise millions of lives. These proposals will also cost Florida taxpayers nearly $300 million to implement and come at the higher cost of curtailing basic constitutional protections.
“Experience from smaller-scale detention sweeps shows that Trump’s mass deportation agendas will lead to people, including American citizens and individuals with protected status, being stopped, arrested, or detained simply because of the color of their skin or accent. In forcing Florida law enforcement to participate in this cruel agenda, the right to due process and other basic legal rights that are provided to every person in the United States are at risk.
“Fairness, due process, humaneness, and mutually beneficial opportunity should be at the core of our immigration system. Instead of proposing constructive legislation, Florida politicians would rather engage in fearmongering and pass proposals that will cause people to be unnecessarily deprived of their liberty, separated from family, and subjected to abusive detention conditions. Denying bail and mandating the death penalty without a jury is not only cruel and unusual but also blatantly unconstitutional. No government should advance an extreme political agenda over the well-being of Floridians.
“Florida has long provided Florida residents who are undocumented the ability to go to college if they could afford to pay in-state tuition. This has benefited our state and our workforce. It has led to a more educated Florida and contributed millions to our economy. Undocumented immigrants pay over $15 million annually in in-state tuition for higher education. For years, undocumented people have lived, worked, and contributed to our education system under the assurance that they would not be torn from their homes. Ripping apart this once bi-partisan agreement is both cruel and bad governance.
“All people have a right to live free from cruel, inhumane, or abusive treatment. No matter the origin or recency of someone’s immigration journey to the United States, their life has inherent value and they should be treated with dignity and respect. These are the core values that have come to define American democracy. Yet, politicians now want us to abandon these values for divisive and deadly xenophobic policies that serve no interest but their own political ambitions.
“We have grown too accustomed to allowing people to become collateral damage to harmful politics. It must end. The ACLU of Florida will never stop fighting to protect the borders of our constitution, which demands the dignity and safety of all Floridians—no matter where they were born.”
