At forum, local attorneys discuss criminalization of immigrants, economic costs.
Johannes Werner
Original Air Date: Jan. 15, 2024
Host: James Martin is an immigration attorney in Sarasota, and he was an invited guest at a forum on immigration by the Manatee League of Women Voters on Monday, a week before Donald Trump’s second inauguration.
Johannes Werner: Martin answered the question whether people are concerned about the promise of mass deportations like this:
James Martin, immigration attorney.
James Martin: Absolutely. Usually, by Dec. 15, my business falls off—everybody is in Christmas mode—and it just kept going this year. People are very, very concerned. What we grapple with in the practice here is having definitive answers because everything is up in the air. We have to try to keep the clients calm but also keep them informed of what the dangers are.
JW: The proponents of mass deportation say that—for now—only criminals will be subject to the first wave. But Trump has said he wants to end Temporary Protected Status for immigrants from some troubled countries, as well as the tolerated status for Dreamers.
Asked about whether Trump and U.S. federal agencies will have the ability to deport the promised 1 million undocumented immigrants a year, Jim Delgado, a personal injury lawyer who practices in Sarasota—and the other panelist—said that’s definitely not the case.
Jim Delgado: [To deport] 1 million people a year for the next ten years, you’re looking at almost a trillion-dollar price tag. The answer is no. They can’t. But I’ll tell you what you can do: you can stir a lot of fear, you can tear up a lot of communities, you can do a lot of short-term damage—and guess who the damage is. It’s going to be people like us. It’s going to be people like my clients. It’s going to be the person who you buy your coffee from, your sandwiches from—that’s who it really impacts. The politicians will use it as fodder for the next election, and they’ll get elected.
JW: For Florida residents without papers, becoming a criminal can happen while driving kids to school. Jim Delgado described how Florida made it practically impossible for undocumented immigrants to get a driver’s license here.
JD: They got rid of that long list and made a list of five documents that you need. Unfortunately, undocumented people don’t have any of those five documents. So what happened? The court system started to get overrun. I still did criminal law back then. I was maybe four or five years into my practice—I started practicing in ‘98, so I was two years into my practice. At that time, you might get five people a week driving on no valid driver’s license. That’s the charge: no valid driver’s license. You might have got five a week. After 2002, that number started to jump up to 50 to 100 per week arrested. And I’m just talking about Manatee County.
And now, Florida has criminalized driving while undocumented.
Jim Delgado, personal injury lawyer.
JD: So, just recently, as of July 1st, DeSantis changed that law. They have now conflated no valid driver’s license and driving on a suspended license. Now, driving on a suspended license means your license has been taken away from you for some bad act that you did. No valid driver’s license just meant that you never got a driver’s license ever, so the penalties were small, and it never stopped being a second-degree misdemeanor. What that really means is you’re not going to do over 60 days of jail time and people don’t care about it. It stays a second-degree misdemeanor. You can’t enhance it to a felony; it just stays like it is. I think there’s a competition between Florida and Texas to see who can be harder on undocumented people. Believe it or not, I think Florida might be winning. The law, as of July 1st, changed. Now, on the third conviction for no valid driver’s license, you have to do a mandatory ten days of jail time.
JW: Delgado, the son of immigrants from Cuba and Mexico—he also is a past chair of the local Latin Chamber of Commerce—said that, when it comes to the economy, we’re shooting ourselves in the foot.
ICE workplace raid.
JD: The spending power of undocumented people right now in the United States is $254 billion. In Florida, it’s $13 billion. Remember, if you want to deport people, you have to get rid of $254 million—in purchasing power, not the taxes; I’ll get to that—and, if it was up to DeSantis, you have to be willing to give up $13 billion in spending power in Florida. I haven’t even gotten to the work part yet. So what do they pay in federal taxes? Almost $47 billion in federal taxes; in state and local, approximately $30 billion; in social security, $22.6 billion; and in Medicare, $5.7 billion. In Florida alone, the undocumented worker pays $1.8 billion in state and local taxes. That’s a big number, so you have to be willing to get rid of that. If you look at me and you say, “You know what? Those are just numbers. They probably came from a bogus website. They’re lying to you,” okay. Fine. Don’t listen to the numbers I told you. Let’s look at it from a different perspective. Look at the average undocumented family. Four, five people. You have to ask yourself, if you deport them, where do they buy their cars from? They purchase them here. Where do they insure them? Here. Where are they registered? Here. Where do they buy their food from? Here. Where do they buy their gas from? Here. Where do they buy their clothes from? Here. Their rent? Here. Their mortgage payments? Here.
JW: Reporting for WSLR News, Johannes Werner.
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