Florida’s Right Turn on Immigration

By Geraldo Cadava April 28, 2023 The New Yorker

In June, 2014, Andrea Reyes, an immigration lawyer born in Colombia and raised in the U.S., opened her
own firm in Jacksonville, Florida. She helped her clients with their applications and petitions to remain in
the United States. A few months after she started her practice, the Department of Justice’s Board of
Immigration Appeals granted asylum protection to victims of domestic violence, which Reyes called “a
huge triumph for the immigration world.” Soon after that, President Barack Obama announced an expansion
of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Reyes started winning more and more cases, and
her business grew.

Reyes remained busy during Donald Trump’s Presidency, but it was harder for her to win. Trump reversed
the decision to protect victims of domestic violence, and he attacked the asylum system in general. Trump
also undid Obama’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement directives, which established that only violent
criminals and those who posed national security threats were priorities for deportation. Under Trump, Reyes
said, “everyone was deportable, everyone was a priority, everyone was a target.”

“They were arresting immigrants at work, outside of school, in parking lots, outside of stores, gas stations,”
Reyes recalled. “It was a horrific time.” When President Biden entered office, he reversed some of Trump’s
directives, but Reyes has been disappointed that the Biden Administration hasn’t done more. She mentioned
“programs that would actually provide immediate solutions, such as the H-2A visa program that would
allow temporary workers to meet our seasonal needs.” She said that Biden “could also champion more bills
to create a pathway to legalization.” But, Reyes added, “our divided Congress is unwilling to do anything.
The hard truth is that no President can fix this on his own.”

All of this is to say that the past few years have been hard for an immigration attorney in Florida. Governor
Ron DeSantis’s recent immigration proposals will be more of the same The legislation would make it a
felony to harbor or transport certain undocumented immigrants into the state, invalidate driver’s licenses
issued to undocumented immigrants by other states, require many hospitals to collect information about the
immigration status of all patients, increase the penalty for larger businesses hiring undocumented
immigrants, enhance coöperation between local authorities and federal immigration officers, and
prohibit DACA recipients and others eligible to work from obtaining a license to practice law in Florida.

Unlike California and Arizona, where Mexican Americans have a long history of opposing anti-Latino
legislation, Florida’s Latino communities are more ideologically diverse. Even after DeSantis flew
migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, which his opponents called a cruel stunt, he was reëlected with fifty-eight
per cent of the Latino vote.

Even if many Latinos support more stringent immigration policies, they may come to oppose DeSantis’s
law. Once they realize that they could be arrested for crossing a state border with an immigrant relative or
friend, or once a sick relative is denied medical care, then they may turn against it.

Reyes, the immigration lawyer from Jacksonville, told me, “I know it sounds super devastating, but I feel
like it’s too late. Congress is the only entity that has the power to change what is happening in the United
States.” That doesn’t mean she won’t keep fighting. ♦

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