For the past four years, dozens of homeless sex offenders have lived in tents in a makeshift encampment along a set of railroad tracks in Hialeah, a city in Florida’s Miami-Dade County. The residents live in squalid conditions, as documented by the Miami New Times in an investigation last year. Rain soaks through the tents, and flies and mosquito populate the residents’ belongings. Because there isn’t even an outhouse in the area, many of those living there are forced to defecate outside. Many of the surrounding businesses have complained that they’ve lost customer traffic as a result of the encampment and view the residents as a nuisance. Because it is widely known that sex offenders live there, passersby sometime pelt those living there with eggs and bottles, the Miami New Times reported. After the story, which followed years of mounting public complaints, Miami-Dade’s county commissioners amended an ordinance on public camping to effectively outlaw the encampment this past January, citing public safety and health concerns. In March, Mayor Carlos Giménez gave those living there 45 days to vacate. That deadline is Sunday; if they refuse to leave by then, police may be able to arrest them on the spot. The problem is, they have almost nowhere to go.

Civil liberties advocates in south Florida are raising the alarm about what the changes mean for the scores of people impacted by the changed ordinance. There are severe restrictions on where in the county sex offenders can live, said Gail Colletta, president of the Florida Action Committee, which works to reform sex offender laws. “Homeless shelters are not allowed to house sex offenders because there may be children in there,” she said, noting that the approaching hurricane season makes the situation even more difficult. “Many of them are left out in the elements because they can’t get to a safe place, or there’s no safe place to be because of ordinances. The inhumanity is beyond the pale. These are people who’ve already paid their debt to society, they’ve been incarcerated, they’ve done their time, they’re trying to successfully complete probation, but at every single turn, we create situations to set them up to fail. And this is a perfect example of another one.” Many of the camp residents have ties to Miami-Dade County, which makes it difficult for them to pick up and leave to counties with less restrictive laws. “Most people have families here. They grew up here. They’re going to counseling as a condition of probation. This is where their work is, this is where their families are,” said Valerie Jonas, an attorney working with a team of public interest lawyers to sue the county on behalf of homeless sex offenders. “Most people getting out of prison go to their families because it’s really important to reintegrate into the community.” Jonas described, in emotional terms, the plight of her clients. “We have an elderly client who’s got severe Parkinson’s disease … as well as hideous and disabling back problems,” she said. “We’ve got this client who all he wants in his life is to keep his job. His life is his job. And he’s one of the lucky ones because he’s been able to find and maintain employment. You can’t really even imagine a level of self-hatred that you get from just having everybody in society treat you like you’re radioactive just in your being.” Florida’s Miami-Dade County has among the strictest residency restrictions for sex offenders of anywhere in America, thanks to a legislative change made in 2005. That year, 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford of Homosassa, Florida, was tragically abducted, raped, buried alive, and murdered by a convicted sex offender who lived nearby. In response to the Lunsford case, the Florida legislature passed a law toughening sex offender reporting requirements. Similar laws, named after Jessica, proliferated nationwide. On a more local level, Florida municipalities responded by strengthening their own laws related to sex offender residential restrictions. First, the city of Miami Beach, which is in Miami-Dade, passed a law mandating that sex offenders cannot live within 2,500 feet of schools or parks, which basically exiled that population from the island. The county then followed suit. Under the county’s code, offenders are prohibited from living within 2,500 feet of schools, day care centers, and playgrounds. These restrictions block off most of the county to sex offenders. In 2017, the American Civil Liberties Union in Florida found just 320 affordable rental units in the entire county that met the requirements, and the options available to indigent people are even more limited.

Map: ACLU of Florida

The situation in Miami-Dade is in many ways reflective of a larger national ambivalence toward the plight of sex offenders, who become defined by the heinous crimes they’ve committed – sexual assault, sexual battery, or rape – without any consideration of the circumstances that led to their crimes. To humanize the perpetrators would be an affront to the victims, according to a relatively common understanding of the criminal justice system in America. Sex offenders are often thought of as one of the most dangerous class of criminal deviants, and the tough politics around the topic mean that in a country moving full steam ahead on criminal justice reform, they’re left behind. For instance, Florida’s voters in November will get a chance to vote on Amendment 4, which would restore voting rights to most of Florida’s ex-felons. The two groups that are excluded from the amendment are those convicted of murder or felony sexual offenses. The zero-sum game between justice for victims and the human rights of criminals has become a cornerstone of the push for more punitive laws nationwide. That includes Florida. Many of its laws governing residential choices for sex offenders come from the advocacy of a single man: Ron Book, a prominent lobbyist whose daughter Lauren was sexually abused by her nanny. After Book discovered the abuse, he mounted a campaign in Florida to toughen sex offender laws, helping change the laws in over 60 municipalities in the state and nationwide, according to a 2009 Newsweek piece. The resulting displacement in many locales, and the proliferation of homeless encampments full of sex offenders led Newsweek to dub Book as “the lobbyist who put sex offenders under a bridge.” Book was featured in the award-winning 2016 documentary “Untouchable,” which looked at the impact of the laws. The film, which was directed by former public defender David Feige, featured both the gut-wrenching stories of victims of sexual abuse, as well as the testimonies of sexual offenders whose lives are regulated by a network of draconian laws after leaving prison.