Hundreds of activists protest Florida lawmakers' secret immigration deal
"Our communities are being used as bargaining chips and it will have severe economic consequences."
Rebekah Entralgo
Mar 26, 2019, 5:07 pm
Roughly 300 immigration activists flooded the halls of the Florida state Capitol building in Tallahassee on Tuesday to protest a secret immigration deal that would fast-track a bill they say would impose a new form of family separation.
Senate Bill 168, and its sister legislation HB 527 in the House, would prevent municipalities from designating themselves as sanctuary cities — despite the fact that no sanctuary cities currently exist in the state of Florida. Nearly every municipality already shares information with federal immigration authorities, but the new bill would require local law enforcement to comply with federal requests to detain undocumented immigrants for potential deportation proceedings. Immigration activists worry that the bill will incentivize racial profiling and fracture the fragile trust between immigrant communities and local police.
For example, in Florida, getting caught driving without a license three times is a felony. Under SB 168, if an undocumented person with a clean criminal record gets pulled over by police, they would be held by local law enforcement on an ICE detainer, and they would then be transferred to an ICE detention facility and possibly deported.
“[My husband] was detained by immigration on February 20, he was deported on March 20, and now I’m alone with my two children,” an immigration activist named Lilli told the crowd at the Capitol. “This is why I don’t want this bill to pass, because more mothers are going to left on their own.”
https://thinkprogress.org/hundreds-of-activists-protest-florida-lawmakers-secret-immigration-deal-sb-168-e-verify-0d29d4b813ac/
Whats next, embedded chips........................I did not know you could get a felony, if you did not have your drivers license on you in the state of Florida..........................absolutely amazing...............
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