State bill 168 designed to speed up removal of ‘bad criminals’ from US but ordinary families say they are at increased risk

Five-year-old Roxana Gozzer hasn’t seen her father for weeks and does not know the next time she will. Walter Gozzer-Sing never returned home from a “routine” check-in with immigration officials in February. After a month in detention, he was placed without notice on a flight from Miami to Peru. His sudden deportation left the family – including two US citizen children – without their only source of income.

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Roxana has become a face of a titanic battle in Florida over a “racist” bill that has united activists, Democrats and some police chiefs in opposition. If state bill 168 passes, they say, many more families will face separation.

Under the proposed law, sponsored by a hardline Republican who was Donald Trump’s state chair in 2016, local authorities and law enforcement agencies would effectively become federal immigration agents with a responsibility to report and detain undocumented migrants.

The intention, according to state senator Joe Gruters, is simply to enhance public safety by speeding up the removal of violent or “bad criminals” and outlawing so-called sanctuary cities that do not comply with existing immigration laws.

Opponents insist that far from targeting only criminals and those who Trump considers to be “bad hombres”, families like Roxana’s, with undocumented but working parents, would be at increased risk of deportation. They say a simple traffic stop could lead to an arrest and detention that law enforcement would be compelled to report to Immigration and Customs Enforcement before keeping that person in custody for up to 48 additional hours, to await collection by federal agents if Ice issued a detainer request.

“I don’t understand why they get angry with families like ours that just want to have a better life,” said Lily Montalvan, who has looked after Roxana and her son Ronnie, 16, alone since her husband, a construction worker, was deported.

“I had a beautiful family, always together. For my husband, his life was his work and us. This has destroyed us and I do not know how we are going to continue.”

‘It is horrible’

Montalvan and Roxana met Gruters in Tallahassee last week as part of a hundreds-strong delegation from groups including the Florida Immigrant Coalition (Flic) and United We Dream. She said she told him her husband was not a criminal but a hard worker with valid US government labour certification whose only goal since arriving from Peru in 1988 was to raise and support his family. She said Gruters, also the chair of the Republican party of Florida, was unmoved.

“I asked my daughter how she felt leaving the senator’s office and she said, ‘It is horrible,’” Montalvan said.

I don’t understand why they get angry with families like ours that just want to have a better life Lily Montalvan

Also among the delegation was 19-year-old Nataly Chalco, a student of political science and economics at Florida State University who grew up in south Florida after her family moved from Peru when she was six.

“Politicians claim that this bill is strictly to take criminals of the streets, but it doesn’t make anyone feel better when you realise the definition of criminals includes people who are undocumented,” she said.

“Things like a broken taillight or driving to work can lead to the separation of families. Undocumented means that every time a loved one gets behind the wheel you get scared. We deserve to live in communities where we aren’t treated like criminals simply for existing.”

Chalco, whose status remains uncertain while the future of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) is decided, said fear of being stopped prevented her parents helping her move to college.

“I had to do it alone,” she said. “It was too big a risk for my mom and dad to drive eight hours. One more stop and it could become a felony that could lead to deportation.”

Tomas Kennedy, political director of Flic, said the bill passing Florida’s Republican-dominated legislature, possibly in the next two weeks, would leave almost 900,000 undocumented migrants wary of interacting with law enforcement.

“People are afraid, people have anxiety, kids are frightened their parents are going to be sent away,” he said.

“The bill is apocalyptic, with racist language. It deputises police officers to cooperate with Ice [and] apart from the humanitarian and physical perspective, we end up paying for that bill. Domestic violence victims are already scared to go to the police: imagine the climate of fear of these proposals would foment. The trust between public and law enforcement would just be shattered. People would be very afraid to cooperate with law enforcement.”

I don’t care if you have papers or don’t have papers, where you came from or who your parents are. That’s not my job Jorge Colina, City of Miami chief of police

Jorge Colina, chief of the City of Miami police department, is also concerned.

“I’d prefer not to have this job if I had to ask fellow officers to go check where someone is from before helping them,” he said in a Spanish-language interview on Actualidad Radio. “I don’t care if you have papers or don’t have papers, where you came from or who your parents are. That’s not my job. My job is to make sure everyone in this city is safe.”

Opponents claim the law would harm Florida’s economy. A study by New American Economy calculated a loss of $3.5bn in gross domestic product and a drop in tax receipts of more than $100m if just 10% of the state’s undocumented workers were to leave, the same percentage that fled Arizona’s workforce following the passage of the since-repealed “show me your papers” law of 2010.

“The economy in Florida is powered by immigrants,” Kennedy said. “These people work in construction, in tourism, in the hospitality industry. They’re taking care of people’s kids, they’re cleaning homes, they’re serving in restaurants.

“When Georgia passed a similar law in 2011 workers fled to neighbouring states and crops were literally rotting because nobody was picking them. We’re sure we’ll see a similar effect in Florida, it’s a huge agricultural state, a citrus-growing state among other things, and it would be an economic catastrophe.”

‘We’re trying to enforce the law’

Democratic opposition to the bill centres on its “sanctuary cities” provision, which would prevent resisting cooperation with federal immigration authorities, specifically over detainer requests. They argue no such law is needed because there are no sanctuary cities in Florida.

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“There are no jurisdictions in Florida that are out of compliance with information sharing laws at the federal government level,” said Jose Javier Rodriguez, state senator for Miami. “Why does this bill create the phantom of sanctuary cities? Frankly it’s to keep the issue of immigration alive. It is for political purposes.”

In a phone interview, Gruters accused detractors of “fearmongering and misinformation”.

“The only people who will be impacted by this are criminal illegals who are going to jail,” he said. “It has nothing to do with anybody else. If you are an illegal alien here in Florida and you’re trying to be a contributing member of society, your kids are going to school, and you’re not breaking the law, you have nothing to worry about.

“We’re not trying to change immigration law, all we’re trying to do is define it by saying that local governments cannot prohibit cooperation with existing laws. It’s common sense.

“Here in Florida we’re going to try to enforce the law and get rid of some of these bad criminal illegal aliens.”