With President-elect Donald Trump poised to declare a national emergency to clear the way for the mass deportation of undocumented migrants, Florida may face wholesale disruption in the coming year.
Immigration experts say about 5% of Florida’s population – 1.1 million residents – are living here without legal permission. How far Trump goes will be critical in gauging deportation’s impact on communities, families, workplaces and the Florida economy.
At risk could be people living and working in Florida under such programs as Temporary Protected Status (TPS), asylum or parole for Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan (CHNV) migrants.
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which has allowed thousands of children born to undocumented parents to make new lives in Florida, also could be gone soon after Trump takes office in January.
Republican National Convention delegates hold signs that read “MASS DEPORTATION NOW” on July 17, 2024, in Milwaukee.
Deportations could cause ‘real issues here in Florida’
“Add these programs up, and we have real issues here in Florida,” said Juan Carlos Gomez, a professor and immigration expert at Florida International University College of Law.
“What will be the consequences to the economy? But what are the other consequences to people and families? There are many that are very afraid right now,” Gomez added.
Miami-Dade County, with an almost 70% Hispanic population, voted overwhelmingly for Trump in November, with the Republican winning by 11 percentage points over Democrat Kamala Harris. It was the first time a Republican presidential candidate carried the county since 1988.
But Miami-Dade could prove ground zero for Trump’s immigration policies.
“It seems like a lot of people thought, ‘This doesn’t apply to me,’ ” Gomez said. “We’ll find out.”
Trump claims mass deportations would reduce crime and free up more jobs for U.S.-born Americans. He confirmed Monday that he plans to declare undocumented immigration a national emergency and deploy the military to conduct deportations.
The American Immigration Council, a Washington, D.C.-based research and advocacy organization, released a report last month claiming it would cost taxpayers at least $315 billion to deport the estimated 13.3 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S.
Nearly half live in Florida, Texas and California.
But the report concluded, “Every American taxpayer would shoulder the fiscal burden of mass deportations — exacerbated by the reduced tax base mass deportation would create — and every American would feel the effects of a devastated labor market.”
Florida’s law prompted smaller scale exodus
Florida may already have experienced a glimpse of what Trump’s deportation plan could yield.
Gov. Ron DeSantis last year enacted a law punishing employers who use undocumented labor and banning those not in this country legally from having a driver’s license.
DeSantis has said he has no problem with companies hiring immigrants, as long as it’s done legally.
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But Florida’s agriculture, construction and tourism industries rely heavily on a workforce whose legal status often is in doubt.
The new law led to an exodus of many immigrant workers from Florida, leaving dozens of businesses and industry associations complaining of a labor shortage the past two years, at a time when available jobs in Florida already far-outstrip the number of applicants.
Although plan could come in January, Florida leaders defer to feds
Florida’s new legislative leaders, both Republicans, deflected questions about the impact of deportation on the state.
“Any sort of immigration policy that comes from the federal government is for the federal government to decide,” said House Speaker Daniel Perez, R-Miami.
Senate President Ben Albritton, R-Wauchula, who, like Perez, was sworn into a two-year leadership term Tuesday, also provided little insight: “That’s a federal issue,” he said. “That’s up to the federal government.”
Florida is among a half-dozen states which each collect more than $1 billion in taxes from undocumented immigrants – a flow of public money likely to disappear with deportations.
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonprofit research organization, showed in a report earlier this year that an estimated 747,000 undocumented immigrants in Florida paid more than $1.8 billion in state and local taxes in 2022.
Nationwide, almost $100 billion in federal, state and local taxes come from this shadowy labor force, surpassing the cost of government services received by these workers, the institute concluded.
The report points out these taxes help fund Social Security, Medicare, food stamps and other federal programs that those working illegally in the U.S. are barred from receiving.
Homeowners, mixed-status families also could be swept in net
The American Immigration Council study found that in 2022, 39% of undocumented immigrant households owned their homes, with Trump’s deportation aspirations potentially uprooting 1.6 million homeowners.
Many undocumented immigrants also share their lives with U.S. citizens, and four million mixed-status families could be affected, the report found.
But any deportation effort may be lessened by undocumented immigrants voluntarily leaving under the threat of Trump’s policies.
The council forecasted that 20% of the 13.3 million people targeted could choose to “self-deport” – effectively fleeing the country. The concept of self-deportation was once advanced by Republican Mitt Romney in a primary debate from Florida, before he became the party’s presidential nominee in 2012.
Trump pledged to get started on mass deportations as soon as he enters office in January.
“On Day 1, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history to get the criminals out,” Trump said during a rally at Madison Square Garden near the end of the presidential race. “I will rescue every city and town that has been invaded and conquered, and we will put these vicious and bloodthirsty criminals in jail, then kick them the hell out of our country as fast as possible.”
Florida is among 40 states where undocumented immigrants pay a larger share of their income in taxes than wealthier residents.
Partly because of Florida’s 6% sales tax, which hits a lower income person proportionately harder, those working illegally wind up paying an average 7.9% of their income in state and local taxes, compared to the top 1% of Florida earners who pay only 2.7%, the institute’s study found.
John Kennedy is a reporter in the USA TODAY Network’s Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at [email protected], or on X at @JKennedyReport.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Trump ‘mass deportation’ plan could impact 5% of Florida’s population
