WSLR’s Surreal News talks to an immigrant advocate.
By Johannes Werner
Original Air Date: November 29, 2024
Host: President-elect Trump has promised mass deportations. How will this play out in Florida, home to one out of 10 undocumented immigrants? Surreal News host Lew Lorrini asked an immigrant advocate.
Johannes Werner: On the campaign trail, Donald Trump promised to deport 10 million immigrants. Florida is home for about one-tenth of the undocumented migrant population in the United States. So what should we expect come January 20? Tessa Petit is the executive director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, and Lew Lorrini interviewed her for the Surreal News on WSLR.
The Florida Immigration Coalition has 83 member organizations — many of them churches and labor unions — and more than 100 allies.
Petit says the promised deportations are already keeping the Coalition busy.
Workplace raid in Mississippi. Photo courtesy ICE
Tessa Petit: We know that this moment is crucial, so we also understand that it’s the time for us to double down on community protection. So we’re getting ready.
JW: Petit describes the potential impact of mass deportations like this:
TP: We know that Florida has about a million. So we have about 10% of the undocumented population in the country reside here in the state of Florida. And what we’re going to see is … I know a lot of reports focus on labor and taxes, the financial impact, but what we’re also going to see is a lot of family separation. We’re going to see children disappearing from classrooms because they’ve either self deported with their parents or the parents have been deported, and so they can no longer attend the same school district. We’re going to see friends losing their own friends. We’re going to see neighbors’ houses suddenly being empty.
We have a lot of the residents, a lot of what we call the undocumented immigrants in the state of Florida have been here for more than 10 years. They have their homes. They have a life. And so we’re gonna see that, we’re gonna see probably a lot of apartments becoming empty.
JW: During the first Trump administration, there were already mass deportations from South Florida and high-profile workplace raids. But the situation is different today. Petit described the moving parts.
Tessa Petit
TP: There’s a big difference between then and now. Now, even if there is pushback — and it happened back then because the mayor at the time, Jimenez, had quickly lined up with the Trump agenda when it came to Miami-Dade County. We know that unfortunately we still have a Republican trifecta with a supermajority in the state. So we don’t think that we’re going to be able to get any help from our legislators to push back on anything that the current Florida government decides to do. And if we see the governor’s office deciding to support the mass deportation, it’s going to happen quickly and swiftly. I think even if the National Guard or the Army says they’re not going to do it, we know that here in the state of Florida, our governor has his very own police force that he can unleash any time on anyone, and I think if it’s going to move, it’s going to move faster.
But as you brought up in the beginning, deportation does not happen overnight, right? So, there has to be a place for people to be housed. We’ve done some advocacy to shut down Guantanamo Bay. Guantanamo Bay has a long history of mistreatment of immigrants who were there at some point. Haitians were actually held at Guantanamo Bay for a while. I guess that’s the closest camp. I don’t know if they are building any camps or any additional immigrant detention beds here in the state of Florida. We have not heard of that. We’ve tried to shut down those that are here now.
The only thing that we can do is … it takes time for them to put together whatever the infrastructures are that they’re going to need, et cetera et cetera, so that it buys us time and we figure out through a legal system how we can prevent the mass deportation. But there is more anti-immigrant sentiment in the state now, and we’re afraid that this might impact our communities more.
JW: The biggest economic unknown is who will replace undocumented immigrant workers.
TP: I’m curious to see, once they start this mass deportation, who’s going to take the immigrant jobs. Because we know that there’s a lot of labor that undocumented immigrants do, that they’re not going to be able to replace these folks in an immediate future or in the future, because these are not jobs that most Americans are used to, such as farming. Right? And we saw it during COVID where they were, because they needed to make money, they needed to provide for their families. They kept working. They were frontline workers during COVID.
JW: The emotional impact will be high, just due to the sheer numbers. Many families have mixed status, Petit says, but everyone will be affected.
TP: I think the hardest part of it all is going to be the emotional impact that it’s going to have on children in schools, on friends and family and loved ones. We have a lot of mixed status families, about 700,000 mixed status families in the state.
JW: Immigrants with Temporary Protected Status — also known as TPS — may be subject to deportation as well.
TP: We know that in the state of Florida, we have at least 600,000 people who have TPS, residing here. And once they become out of status, if they decide to also deport them, then it just practically almost doubles the number of folks subject to deportation, and definitely doubles or triples the number of people who are going to be impacted by those actions.
JW: Even citizens and their families could be caught up by the deportation machine. Petit expects the Office of De-Naturalization to be revived by the incoming administration, threatening to deport unwanted citizens deemed terrorists, sex offenders and the like. She also expects the new administration to use the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport U.S. citizens deemed dangerous. Ultimately, Petit believes that the political promotion of hate will produce backlash.
TP: Where I think their failure is is that, in the long run, encouraging hate throughout this country, we’re seeing it now in schools in California, we’re seeing it everywhere, this encouraging hate throughout this country is gonna have a long lasting negative impact. And not just for Hatians. I mean, I don’t think that the administration, regardless of how powerful they are with the Republican trifecta, regardless of where their power is now, I strongly believe that in this country there is still a legal system that will show if a racially based attack against one set of people, it will show because of the color of our skin, and I hope that the institutions that have been built over the past decades to make America what it is now, that these institutions will not fail all of these people who are here, who came in and have an immigration status. May be temporary, but they still have an immigration status.
JW: To listen to Lew Lorrini’s full interview with Tessa Petit, go to https://wslr.org/shows/surreal-news/.
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