Category: Law & Crime

The Miami Herald – Opinion

Do you really want to ‘make America Florida’? Under DeSantis, it’s a mean place” | Opinion

The Miami Herald Editorial Board – May 12, 2023

Florida, under Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republican Legislature, is increasingly hard to recognize. It’s an intolerant and repressive place that bears scant resemblance to the Sunshine State of just a few years ago.

The 2023 legislative session cemented those appalling setbacks. Florida is now a state where government intrusion into the personal lives of Floridians is commonplace. What will it take for citizens to push back on this unprecedented encroachment on their rights? And, more broadly, what if Desantis supporters get what they want, which is to “make America Florida”?

The latest round of laws makes Florida sound more and more dystopian — something voters in the rest of the nation should note if they are considering what a DeSantis presidency could look like. The state has new rules for who can use which bathroom, what pronouns can be used in schools, which books can be taught and when women can get an abortion (almost never.) There are measures to strip union protections from public employees, keep transgender children and their parents from choosing to seek medical treatment, prevent universities from discussing diversity or inclusion and ban talk of gender identity or sexuality in schools all the way through 12th grade.

The governor, meanwhile, is consolidating power — with a personal militia to do his bidding and the ability, granted by the ever-compliant Legislature, to fly undocumented immigrants around the country on taxpayer dollars. Guns will be easier to carry, and the death penalty will be easier to impose, thanks to DeSantis and the Legislature.

Groups targeted

Forbidden speech, attacks on the rights of vulnerable groups, union-busting, a governor-controlled State Guard? Welcome to the mean state of Florida.

This session, lawmakers seemed to take delight in passing bills designed to push already-marginalized groups into the shadows. One bans children from drag shows (where’s parental freedom now?) Another makes it a misdemeanor to use bathrooms in public schools and other government buildings if the bathroom doesn’t correspond with your sex at birth.

That’s the same bill that led Rep. Webster Barnaby, a Republican from Deltona, to erupt into a thundering, Old Testament-style tirade at a House Commerce Committee meeting in April, calling transgender people “demons,” “imps” and “mutants from another planet.” He apologized later, but the fact that he felt free enough to go on that rant speaks volumes about the way Republicans in Tallahassee are thinking. And though the words were abhorrent even to some Republicans, in the end, that didn’t make a dent. The bill passed.

Lawmakers still had plenty more punishment to dole out: Florida also will start prohibiting teachers from asking for students’ preferred gender pronouns in schools, expanding the “Don’t say gay” law, and criminalizing gender-affirming care.

In addition to making it legal to carry a loaded and concealed gun, without training or a permit — that’s HB 543 — lawmakers made sure under SB 450 to lower the bar for the death penalty to eight votes from a 12-member jury, the lowest in the nation. They did that knowing that Florida has the highest number of exonerations in the country, with 30 people since 1973 wrongfully convicted and sent to Death Row, only to be cleared years later.

What happens if we continue to convict the wrong people? Republicans clearly don’t care. They had one main goal this session: to make DeSantis more right-wing than potential White House rival Donald Trump.

Court challenge

They may have succeeded with the six-week abortion ban, which goes into effect if the state’s current 15-week law weathers an ongoing legal challenge in the state Supreme Court. The six-week ban is especially cruel and punitive because many women don’t know they are pregnant within at that point. That could amount to forced pregnancy, a hellish concept if there ever was one — and one that may make even staunch Republicans blanch.

And don’t forget about immigration. Lawmakers sure didn’t. They passed a bill that will give DeSantis $12 million to continue his inhumane migrant relocation effort — the one that drew national attention last year when he treated a group of migrants like pawns, flying them from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard. The government will also prohibit local governments from providing money to organizations that issue identification cards to people illegally in the country and will require hospitals that accept Medicaid to ask about citizenship — no doubt intended to dissuade undocumented immigrants from seeking medical care.

Banning speech, discouraging medical care for immigrants, making transgender people feel unwelcome while making women less free and loosening up gun laws? This dark and angry place isn’t the Florida we know. It’s not the Florida we want.

Voters across the country should take note. As we head into a presidential election, the Florida that is emerging today under DeSantis’ tight control is a bleak cautionary tale.

Miami Herald

Gov. DeSantis is banking on Americans hating immigrants more than high insurance rates | Opinion

Fabiola Santiago – May 12, 2023

He’s got your back on the hate, red Floridians.

For starters, millions of your tax dollars have been designated by Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Legislature — no, not to subsidize our skyrocketing home insurance — but to ship planeloads of new immigrants to blue states.

The governor will fish them from the sea, if he has to, for publicity stunts.

His presidential aspirations need shocker headlines — and the oxygen in his $117 billion big government budget only left room for catering to your irrational immigrant-loathing and to fighting Disney World in courts over one opinion contrary to his.

Immigrant-hunting will be as expensive as the well-paid lawyers DeSantis is employing to uphold civil rights violations.

By signing into law a sweeping anti-immigrant bill, DeSantis has built his own wall around the state’s sea and land borders, hoping to outdo Donald Trump’s U.S.-Mexico effort, wimpy and inefficient by comparison.

The Republican governor and his sycophant Legislature figured out that all they had to do was terrorize people with the ruthless contents of SB 1718 — and asylum-seekers wouldn’t confuse the Sunshine State for a sanctuary.

It’s already working so well that immigrant construction workers in South Florida weren’t showing up to work this week for fear that there would be a round-up and they’d be deported, CBS News Miami reported.

READ MORE: Florida can’t run without immigrant labor, so good luck with your crackdown, Gov. DeSantis | Opinion

Red mandates

DeSantis calls his mandates “the strongest anti-illegal immigration law in the country to combat Biden’s border crisis.”

Ironically, he’s promoting the message in an explanatory document set in bold red and black lettering — the colors of Fidel Castro’s 26th of July Movement in Cuba and the Sandinistas’ National Liberation Front in Nicaragua, regimes from which immigrants are fleeing.

The new Florida immigration law, effective July 1, allows random audits of employers suspected of hiring unauthorized immigrant workers — opening the door to ethnic and racial profiling.

All those Hispanic business owners in Miami-Dade and other immigrant-populated communities who voted for DeSantis are being richly rewarded. (There’s a more appropriate verb that starts with an “s,” but I’m not allowed to use it). I don’t feel sorry for these voters. But I do for hard-working undocumented immigrants who aren’t hurting anyone and the families who love them.

The medical field — those providing care and their patients — will also be adversely affected.

If an immigrant without legal status has a medical emergency — a life-threatening illness, is having a baby or had a car accident, makes no difference — the law now requires that hospitals collect data about patients’ immigration status and document the money spent on providing them healthcare.

In addition, no Florida government entity is allowed to issue to immigrants an identification card of any kind, even if they have passports or birth certificates. Can’t get one without proof of legal entry.

People driving without a license is just what we need in Florida. And, nope, relatives can’t drive the undocumented, either, and stay within the law themselves. Drivers can be charged with a third-degree felony for knowingly giving an undocumented migrant a lift to church, school or work.

Do so, and risk being charged as a human smuggler.

In Miami, this means all the Cubans and Venezuelans who love Trump and DeSantis so much — and are housing, hosting, transporting or providing medical care for anyone without the right documentation — now have enforced restrictions to keep in mind.

If they operate as they have until now, on the fly, they become law-breakers.

Then, there’s the tightening of E-Verify, which makes it more difficult than ever for workplaces to hire immigrants.

A federal program for employers to confirm a person’s immigration status, operating since 1996, it became voluntary when President Bill Clinton signed it into law under the Illegal Immigrant Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. Later required, the program was expanded and made easier to use under President Barack Obama.

Not good enough for DeSantis, who says his state will strictly enforce E-Verify: Employers with 25 or more workers have to put through the system everyone’s immigration status — or face a $1,000 per day fine if an employee is found to be in the country illegally.

All companies, no matter whether they maintain your lawn, paint the walls or put on a new roof, have to comply. So the able-bodied, quick-learning, eager-to-work rafter who just got off the boat can’t work at your house.

No, Florida is no longer a place where immigrants can rebuild — in peace — lives lost to dictatorship, poverty, and violence, while in the process, contributing desperately needed labor to the United States economy.

Without a care for the state’s history (maybe he is a Midwesterner, as he tries to pass off himself in his political pamphlet-styled memoir) DeSantis — with the help of shameless legislators who are the descendants of exiles and other immigrants — has shut the door.

READ MORE: Lawmakers with no pride in their immigrant heritage help DeSantis crush our communities | Opinion

Why the persecution?

The governor needs your red vote badly to win the Republican presidential primary — and he’s sure that crushing immigrants is the key to voters’ hearts. So much so that he forgot all about the damage those pesky hurricanes and rising seas bring and the ensuing reconstruction.

But no worries about a state dependent on agriculture, tourism and construction, left without immigrant labor.

Write with a smile the big check to the insurance company that, after decades of paying, will tell you when you most need them — as is happening now to the insured in southwest Florida repairing homes destroyed by Hurricane Ian: The fancy door is a decoration and isn’t covered.

Write with a spring in your step the big check to the construction company charging you more because the owner can’t hire cheaper labor.

Your man in Tallahassee has delivered!

Now you can peel your eyes away from the white-world-is-ending Fox News reports from the southern border.

They really are bad for your health. The surge in blood pressure can provoke a stroke — and there won’t be a cheap, undocumented immigrant your family can hire to change your diaper.

This is the new world DeSantis and the Florida GOP have created, one conceived in hatred of The Other who, more often than not, was making our lives better.