For almost a decade now, Florida has served as a laboratory for hardline immigration policies that are later exported to other state legislatures across the country. The recent arrest of Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez, a U.S.-born citizen who was mistakenly detained under an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) hold in Leon County, shows the threat that these persecutory laws pose for the civil rights of all people, regardless of immigration status.
Since 2019, state lawmakers, at Gov. Ron DeSantis’s behest, have approved a series of anti-immigrant bills, starting with Senate Bill (SB) 168 and SB 1808. These bills mandated cooperation with federal immigration enforcement and banned sanctuary cities in Florida, even though at the time of passage, no Florida cities had enacted sanctuary city-type policies.
That was followed by further legislation threatening licenses of nonprofit shelters that housed unaccompanied migrant children; more bills banning sanctuary policies (even though, again, no city in the state had enacted those policies); and the passage of SB 1718 in 2023. This legislation made national headlines by, among other things, establishing felony charges for crossing the state line with an undocumented person in your vehicle even if they were family; mandating that health care providers that accept Medicaid dollars ask a patient’s immigration status; and requiring the use of E-Verify for private companies with 25 or more employees…