“I’m leaving Florida because I won’t let my kids live in the shadows”: The undocumented immigrants leaving the state fearing DeSantis’ new immigration law

Alejandra is surrounded by boxes and suitcases that don’t fit in the car.

This Saturday, she embarks on a 20-hour journey to move from Florida to New York with her three children and she hasn’t yet determined what matters most to them: which toys to keep and which to leave behind.

Away from her grandmother and the affections that remained in Bogotá, Alejandra managed to establish a routine for the kids in West Palm Beach, north of Miami, South Florida over the past two years.

The 30-year-old Colombian girl got up early to make breakfast. Then he would take Dominik, the eldest of 11, to the school bus stop and then take John and Samuel, the 7-year-old twins, to school.

Alejandra worked in a food store from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. She had finally found a babysitter who would pick up the boys in the afternoon and look after them until she could get home.

However, when Florida passed SB 1718, sponsored by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, warehouse managers warned staff that their jobs were at stake.

Known as the “anti-immigrant law”, the new regulation restricts undocumented migrants’ access to jobs, identity cards, health services and transportation. This will come into effect on July 1.

way to New York

Like Alejandra, most warehouse workers are undocumented.

“They’re closing the doors on me and my kids,” she says as she packs the last of the items the kids will take to New York, where Alejandra’s brother will shelter them while he gets a new job.

Unlike her, her children already speak English. Dominik attended a special advanced math, science and computer program at the school. His dream is to study finance at Harvard University.

“I feel belittled”, confirms Alejandra as she separates a stuffed animal from Simba, the son of the Lion King, one of the few toys who will travel to New York with the family. “All I want is for my children to have the opportunity to study and become professionals.”

New York is a “sanctuary state”as is known in places where Democratic governors passed laws to protect the rights of undocumented migrants.

Republican governors like DeSantis send migrants arriving in their jurisdiction after crossing the southern border to sanctuary states by bus or plane.

Republican leaders claim that the immigration policies of President Joe Biden’s administration enabled the United States last year to achieve the largest increase in irregular migration flows across the border with Mexico in the past two decades.

Alejandra and her children also entered through the Mexican border. Now they are applying for asylum.

The “strictest immigration law in the country”

DeSantis promotes SB 1718 as “the strongest anti-illegal immigration law in the country.”

The new regulation forces companies with 25 or more employees to use a system to verify the immigration status of employees (dubbed E-Verify), imposes fines of $1,000 a day if they employ an undocumented immigrant and threatens business owners with having their business licenses suspended if they commit these violations multiple times.

The law prohibits local authorities in Florida from issuing IDs to foreigners who are illegally in the United States and invalidates identity cards issued by other states in such cases.

Also requires hospitals to collect immigration data from patients and submit it to the authorities, to calculate the cost of providing medical care to undocumented migrants.

In addition, consider an offense for someone to transport an undocumented person in their car to enter Florida territory.

The Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank, estimates that there are 772,000 undocumented migrants living in Florida.

live in the shadows

Tadeo is 12 years old and wears diapers.

He still does not speak, but receives phonology and psychomotor therapy at a school in West Palm Beach, says his father Maikel Piriz.

When the doctors said Tadeo had severe autism, his parents attended schools in Canelones, the town where they lived in southern Uruguay, which offered no better alternative than put Tadeo in a corner and let him play with blocks of geometric figures.

Maikel and his wife decided to emigrate to the United States, hoping to find centers that specialize in the treatment of autism. They arrived in the country by plane in 2017, with tourist visas and the intention to become legal as soon as possible.

However, the Uruguayan nationality and family profile did not seem to fit with a visa that paved the way for permanent residence in Florida.

They left and returned to the United States twice, but they failed to find the legal mechanism to obtain residency.

Under Florida’s new law, Maikel and his wife decided to leave the United States permanently.

“I’m not going to allow my children to live in the shadows, to be left out because they don’t have papers,” says Maikel from a farm where she cleans the horse stable.

“I’ll leave if a chase starts”

Carlos, a 53-year-old Mexican, has not yet made the decision to leave Florida.

The owner of the company where he works as a corn tortilla delivery driver for restaurants and supermarkets promised to do everything in his power to keep him on the payroll, although Your driver’s license expired two years ago and you cannot renew it from now on as long as you have no papers.

“I was rooted in Florida 13 years ago. It is very difficult to suddenly get up and start a new life in another place overnight,” he assures during a break in his daily route to hand out the corn tortillas.

Each week, she sends between $100 and $200 to her three children in Colima, the capital of the state of the same name, west of Mexico City.

Carlos says he will consider leaving Florida when a witch hunt is unleashed against undocumented migrants.

“We have to see whether the police will from now on arbitrarily arrest people on the street, whether they will prosecute us because of our skin color.”

“If a chase starts, I leave. I am not willing to give up my peace for this law”.

The owners of the stores where Carlos delivers the merchandise note that consumption and sales of corn tortillas have fallen in recent weeks.

Many of his clients have already left Florida.