Groups sue Florida over latest immigration law
the law in question, FL SB 1718Allows authorities to charge someone with human trafficking if they knowingly transport an undocumented migrant across state lines. And it would ban an undocumented immigrant from driving a car, even if they have an out-of-state driver’s license, and require state hospitals that receive Medicaid to ask patients about their immigration status.
The lawsuit states, “Thousands of Floridians and other state residents — both citizens and non-citizens — are at risk of arrest, charges and prosecution for transporting a vaguely defined category of immigrants into Florida.” “Families may not be able to visit each other across state lines. Parents who live near the state line may not be able to drive their kids to doctor’s appointments or football games.”
The lawsuit was filed by multiple groups, including the American Immigration Council, Americans for Immigrant Justice, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ACLU Foundation of Florida on behalf of the Farmworkers Association of Florida, a nonprofit farmworker membership organization with nearly 12,000 members both documented and also undocumented.
There are also nine other unnamed plaintiffs, including a US citizen who serves as a director of a non-profit organization based in South Georgia. This plaintiff, for example, transports immigrants of mixed status across states to Jacksonville to see medical specialists, but now fears possible felony charges “for performing a key aspect of her job and doing what she believes is morally right,” she said statement of the lawsuit.
The groups contend that Florida’s law should be considered unconstitutional because it “goes well beyond federal immigration policy and penalizes a wide range of behaviors that Congress did not wish to prohibit.”
“It interferes with the federal immigration program by barring immigrants from entering Florida,” the lawsuit states. “And it unlawfully puts state officials in a position to make complex decisions about people’s immigration status and immigration history.”
DeSantis and his Republican allies claimed during the Florida session that cracking down on immigration would send a “message” to the Biden administration. The law also provided $12 million for Florida to transport migrants from out of state to Democratic strongholds, a controversial policy by the governor and other leaders like Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott, who bused hundreds of migrants in Brought cities like Washington, DC and Chicago and New York.