Florida’s legislature recently passed a bill that reinstates the mandatory death penalty for certain capital offenses. This move is controversial, as it contradicts a 1976 Supreme Court ruling that deemed mandatory death sentences unconstitutional.
Need-to-Know
Mandatory Death Penalty: This means that upon conviction of a specific crime, the death penalty is automatically imposed, without consideration of individual circumstances or mitigating factors.
Supreme Court Precedent: In 1976, the Supreme Court ruled that mandatory death sentences are unconstitutional because they don’t allow for individualized consideration of the offender and the offense.
Florida’s New Law: The new law mandates the death penalty for certain offenses committed by individuals who are “unlawfully present” in the U.S.
Takeaways
This new law in Florida raises significant legal and ethical concerns:
Constitutionality: It directly challenges the Supreme Court’s ruling against mandatory death sentences.
Individualized Justice: It removes the possibility of considering mitigating factors that might lead to a sentence less than death.
Discrimination: Critics argue that targeting individuals based on their immigration status is discriminatory and unjust.
Impact on American Culture and Society
The reinstatement of the mandatory death penalty in Florida could have far-reaching consequences:
Rule of Law: It undermines the principle of individualized justice and challenges the authority of the Supreme Court.
Social Divisions: It could exacerbate existing social tensions and divisions, particularly around issues of immigration and criminal justice.
Human Rights: It raises concerns about human rights and the potential for wrongful executions.
The Big Picture
This development in Florida highlights the ongoing debate about the death penalty in the United States. While some argue that it is a necessary punishment for heinous crimes, others contend that it is cruel, inhumane, and inherently flawed. The mandatory death penalty raises additional concerns about fairness, justice, and the potential for state-sanctioned violence. It remains to be seen how this new law will be challenged in the courts and what its long-term impact will be on Florida and the nation.
How does the mandatory death penalty in Florida affect the principle of individualized justice?
The mandatory death penalty in Florida directly contradicts the principle of individualized justice. Individualized justice requires that each case be evaluated based on its unique circumstances, including the specific details of the crime and the individual characteristics and history of the defendant. This allows for mitigating factors to be considered, potentially leading to a sentence less than death.
However, mandatory death sentences remove this individualized consideration. By automatically imposing the death penalty for certain crimes, regardless of any mitigating factors, it treats all defendants as a “faceless, undifferentiated mass,” as stated in the reference text. This disregards the possibility that some individuals may be less culpable or deserving of a less severe punishment.
Florida is one of a growing number of states threatening to use E-Verify as a way to intimidate and control farmworkers. As farmers face worker shortages and farm communities lose residents, are GOP lawmakers shooting themselves in the foot?
Moncho had just started building a life in Florida when SB 1718’, a broad law targeting both undocumented immigrants and the people in their lives, passed through the state legislature last May. In the weeks that followed, his home stopped feeling like home. He began seeing more cops and state troopers in his town, a predominantly immigrant community. He feared it would only get worse and figured it was safest to leave before the law went into effect in July. “It was a quick decision. Once I learned about the law, I talked it over with my wife and we said, ‘OK, let’s get out of here,’” said Moncho, who is using a nickname. He has lived in the U.S. for nearly 20 years, moving between states as a farmworker and construction worker, without getting the chance to fully make any of them his home.
In June 2023, just weeks after the bill’s passage, Moncho and his wife packed up what they could fit into their car and drove—through the wildfire smoke that was blanketing the East Coast at the time—to Vermont to seek work in the dairy industry and build a new life for themselves, again.
They are just two of the many undocumented immigrants who have left Florida in the aftermath of the bill’s passage. In the last nine months, as workers have fled, “help wanted” signs havereportedlypopped up across the state. Crops have beenleft to rotin fields. Entire communities emptied out and turned into “ghost towns.”
“Once the law passed, there were empty houses,” said Moncho. “You went down the street, and it was, ‘For Rent. For Rent. For Rent,’ everywhere.”
The law targets supporters of undocumented immigrants by making it a felony, under the charge of human smuggling, to knowingly transport undocumented people across state lines. Beyond that, it requires medical providers to inquire about a patient’s immigration status (although patients need not respond).
And the most potentially sweeping provision aims to crack down on the hiring of undocumented workers by mandating the use of E-Verify, a web-based federal system that allows employers to confirm or deny workers’ legal status. This applies to workplaces with 25 or more employees and extends the use of E-Verify to many Florida farms that were previously exempt.
Proposed by Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis as an answer to “Biden’s border crisis,” the law reflects a larger Republican strategy for the upcoming election: “The GOP’s goal is to turn the 2024 election into a referendum on the Biden administration’s handling of immigration, framed by the notion of a crisis that has spilled beyond the southern border and into cities across the country,”wroteimmigration reporter Gaby Del Valle in a recent op-ed.
It’s a strategy currently on display in Congress asHouseRepublicans appearpoised to sabotagean immigration deal—even though it wouldcrack downon the southern border—that is backed by President Biden.
But some farmers and advocatesspeculatethat Florida’s law may be largely intended as a political spectacle that will stir chaos but ultimately lack enforcement—and began as an effort to boost DeSantis’s short-lived bid for president—while still allowing Florida industries to rely on undocumented laborers in the end.
“It’s not clear whether it’s a way for DeSantis to boost his image as somebody ‘tough on immigration’ versus a law that will have real penalties and consequences,” Deirdre Nero, a Florida-based immigrant rights advocate and lawyer, told Civil Eats. “We’ll see when they start imposing penalties if the proof is in the pudding.”
Regardless, Florida farmers, farmworkers, and lawmakers will continue to deal with the consequences of the law in the coming months and the potential for another exodus if E-Verify is enforced. As Florida looks to fill worker shortages, the law poses big questions about the future of farm labor in the U.S. as similar policies could expand elsewhere.
As the presidential election season kicks into gear, Donald Trump and other GOP candidates arepromisingsweeping crackdowns on undocumented workers and expanded federalmandates of the use of E-Verify. But Florida, often a bellwether of the GOP’s future, shows that even a political tool can have real consequences.
Chilling Effect
SB 1718 has already disrupted the lives and livelihood of undocumented immigrants and their communities. “It’s a political stunt gone too far,” read alettersent in October by a group of Democratic members of Congress, led by U.S. Representative Darren Soto from Florida. The letter calls upon Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate the law, which they say is “causing immense harm to families and could jeopardize Florida’s economy.”
Agriculture is one of Florida’s major industries, and along with construction and tourism, it plays a significant role in employing the state’sestimated772,000 undocumented immigrants. Nearlyhalfof Florida’s farmworkers are undocumented, according to the Florida Policy Institute.
After many farmworkers began to flee, some Republican lawmakers briefly realized they may have bit the hand that, quite literally, feeds them. Last June, Representative Rick Roth, a vegetable farmer and Republican who voted for the law,pleadedwith constituents to convince workers to stay. “This is more of a political bill than it is policy,”he toldan audience of South Florida pastors at the time, implying that it wouldn’t be enforced with any real consequences.
So far, there have been afew arrestsunder the law’s human smuggling provision, which is being challenged as unconstitutional ina lawsuit. But the E-Verify mandate isn’t set to begin enforcing penalties until July.
Now, nine months after the law’s passage, some farmers arestrugglingto find workers to harvest crops, while farmworkers live and work with heightened uncertainty that ultimately impacts their health and safety.
Jeannie Economos coordinates a pesticide safety and environmental health program for the Farmworker Association of Florida, a group that represents more than 10,000 workers. She told Civil Eats that she typically fields complaints from them about “wages, pesticides, harassment, and other conditions in the workplace.”
But since SB 1718 passed, those complaints have slowed to a trickle, despite last summer’srecord-breaking heat. A similar silence fell over the community under the Trump administration, she said, when farm workers feared speaking out.
The E-Verify Mandate
Still largely voluntary on a federal level, the E-Verify system emerged from the Immigration Act of 1990, a major overhaul of the U.S. immigration system. This established a commission that recommended a national registry for checking immigration status and employment eligibility. After aseries of pilots,the program became available in 2003 to employers in all states as a voluntary database. Since then, a growing number of states have mandated its use, but industry pushback often narrows the scope of these mandates.
Previous attempts to strictly enforce E-Verify have unraveled in Florida. In 2020, when DeSantis pushed for a law mandating use of the database in the hiring process, it was strongly opposed by the Florida Chamber of Commerce and the Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association, for instance, until it was amended toexclude farmworkers.
The version of the bill that passed also created loopholes for private employers, prompting some to call it “E-Verify Light” and “Fake E-Verify.” Prior to that, twoother effortsto require use of the database failed to pass. The reason is clear: The current E-Verify mandate could hurt Florida’s economy to a tune of$12 billionin just one year.
“[Florida’s E-Verify mandate] has always been defeated, and it’s not defeated by the immigrants that would be impacted,” said Paul Chavez, a lawyer with the Southern Poverty Law Center, representing a legal challenge to the law. “It has been defeated by the business community, including from lobbyists for farmers, tourism, and construction.”
“I can’t say for sure, but my understanding is that there will definitely be advocacy from the business community to try to poke holes in the E-Verify law, or even get it repealed,” added Chavez, who expects to see efforts to do so in the current legislative session.
Greg Schell, a lawyer who represents migrant farmworkers in Florida, thinks there is good reason to believe the E-Verify mandate will lack enforcement. “There are no regulations to guide employers,” he said. “It certainly would be plausible for an employer to claim that the returning worker is ‘grandfathered in’ and does not need to be the subject of an E-Verify inquiry.”
In other states, E-Verify mandates have often spared the agriculture industry and other industries dependent on undocumented workers, either by the law’s design or its lax enforcement. For instance, North Carolina passeda lawmandating E-Verify in 2011, but carved out an exemption for “temporary seasonal workers for fewer than 90 days,” which would allow farms to continue employing, with less risk, undocumented people for seasonal work.
In 2013, this exemption wasexpandedto employees of less than nine months. Since then, North Carolina lawmakers have introducedseveralbillsto carve out an even larger exemption for all farmworkers.
Presidential candidate Nikki Haley, who served as South Carolina’s governor between 2011 and 2017, has called for a national E-Verify mandate in her campaign. She often cites the law that she helped pass in 2011 as an example. “What we did in South Carolina with E-Verify was you had to verify that that person was in this country legally or else you could not hire them,” Haley said, in aninterviewwith Breitbart. “That’s what we put in place in South Carolina and, more importantly, we enforced it.”
However, like in other states, South Carolina’s law doesn’t require E-Verify for every employee, exempting a number of essential jobs, including farmworkers and domestic laborers. “The S.C. Farm Bureau convinced lawmakers that the E-Verify requirement could scare off migrant workers needed to harvest crops,” The Statereportedin 2017. A representative from South Carolina’s Department of Labor confirmed that this exemption remains in effect today.
In fact, no state has been able to enforce E-Verify across every industry, without it backfiring. Take Georgia. In 2011, when the state attempted to enforce E-Verify fornearly allemployers, it triggered a mass exodus of farmworkers and an estimated$140 millionloss in agricultural revenue.
The expansion of E-Verify mandates is often framed, including by former Governor Haley, as a way to protect the jobs of U.S. citizens. Yet when this policy has prompted an exodus of undocumented farmworkers, U.S. citizens haven’t exactly jumped at the opportunity to work on farms. In fact, when E-Verify mandates are strictly enforced in agriculture, they have beenfoundto lead to worker shortages, loss in farm revenue, and shrinking farm production.
“E-Verify is a way of sharing immigration status with the government that has no positive value for either the undocumented worker or the employer,” said Mary Jo Dudley, the director of the Cornell Farmworker Program. The consequences are most dire, of course, for the farmworkers who would face criminal penalties and a heightened threat of deportation.
“[For] farmworkers, E-Verify is a pathway to share information with the government that you’re deportable,” said Dudley. “Because once you register that you don’t have a social security number with the government, you become immediately deportable.”
Questions About the Future of Farm Labor
Despite the rippling economic consequences, the promised expansion of E-Verify mandates has become increasingly central to the GOP platform. Currently, Republican lawmakers in Iowa and West Virginia are pushing for state mandates, while DeSantis, Haley, and Chris Christie campaigned for a federal mandate. E-Verify is also part of the conservative playbook,Project 2025, which plans to “permanently authorize and make mandatory E-Verify” on a federal level if a Republican wins the 2024 presidential election.
As Congress tensely debated the latestborder security bill, which was released by the Senate in early February, Republicans have repeatedly insisted on even more stringent proposals. In arecent letter, House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, pointed to the Secure the Border Act (H.R. 2), a Republican-sponsored bill that passed in the House last year—which would federally mandate E-Verify, among other sweeping measures—as reflecting his core legislative demands.
But in recent years, even major bipartisan efforts to reform immigration for farmworkers, namely the multiple versions of the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, have also included E-Verify mandates. First introduced in 2019, the legislation creates a path to citizenship for undocumented farmworkers, while streamlining the hiring of foreign agricultural workers with a temporary H-2A visa.Re-introduced and abandoned last year, the bill is a political compromise that has deeply divided farmworkers and their advocates, and one of the major sticking points is E-Verify.
“There are basic things that we cannot negotiate away, and E-Verify is one of them,” said Edgar Franks, the political director at Familias Unidas por la Justicia, an independent farmworker union in Washington state representing Indigenous farmworkers. “[The Farm Workforce Modernization Act] is sold as immigration reform . . . but it would implement the E-Verify system for the first time across a whole industry in the United States.”
Even in Washington, where E-Verify is voluntary, Franks has observed farmers threaten to use it when engaging with the union. “We’ve seen E-Verify weaponized, especially when immigrant workers are trying to organize themselves into unions, or to get some kind of justice in their workplace,” said Franks. As he sees it, “the main intention [behind E-Verify] is always having this hanging over people’s heads—or raids or deportations—to make sure that the workforce is controllable.”
This perspective was echoed in aletterto the House Agriculture Committee’s newly formed Labor Workforce Working Group last September by a group of farmworker advocates, including the Farmworker Association of Florida and the Agricultural Justice Project, which raised concerns about the Farm Workforce Modernization Act and its E-Verify mandate.
“Do not implement mandatory E-Verify for farms, since it serves as a control and scare tactic in an immigration and trade policy system that strategically created a large population of undocumented immigrant workers to ensure an exploitable labor pool,” reads the letter. “Agriculture risks losing some of its most highly skilled workers.”
Mandatory E-Verify could also create a more exploited workforce by helping funnel more farmworkers into the H-2A guestworker program. The federal program, which recruits farmworkers from other countries, has ballooned bymore than 7 timesbetween 2005 and 2022. It represents one of the only pathways to legally enter the U.S. with a high acceptance rate. Yet the program isrife with exploitation and abuse, often perpetuated by its structure: Farmworkers live in employer-supplied congregate housing, often in unfamiliar rural areas, and are not allowed to switch employers.
“The vulnerability of H-2A workers makes them an attractive workforce for growers,” reads the letter from the group of farmworker advocates. “They are tied to the grower or contractor who recruits them and can be legally fired for not meeting exhausting production quotas, or for raising issues about workplace conditions.”
In fact, the American Farm Bureau, the largest lobbyist group representing growers, hasstatedthat they would support E-Verify mandates under one condition: a “workable guest worker program” so that farmers could more readily hire H-2A workers and curb the anticipated labor shortage. So, by making a pathway to citizenship conditional upon both an E-Verify mandate and streamlining the H-2A program, The Farm Workforce Modernization Act strikes a compromise that appeals to farmers. As Edgar Franks put it, “It’s basically a gift to the agricultural industry.”
As the state with the most H-2A workers, Florida has played a major role in driving the rapid expansion of this program, and it’s likely that it could rely on this program even more to address labor shortages. As of September, Florida’s farms recruited over86,000 H-2Afarmworkers in 2023, already surpassing the amount recruited in 2022. For comparison, California, the second biggest H-2A state, recruited nearly 46,000 workers during that time.
In recent years, Florida’s labor-intensive citrus industry has moved to nearly exclusively hiring H-2A workers, representing 95 percent of the workforce in 2022, according to theFlorida Citrus Manual. If E-Verify is enforced, it’s possible other agricultural industries in Florida may follow suit.
Meanwhile, undocumented farmworkers in other parts of the country have felt the chilling effect of Florida’s law. In New York, a farmworker who asked to remain anonymous and a leader with Alianza Agricola, a group of undocumented dairy workers organizing for their rights, observed an influx of farmworkers coming from Florida to New York late last spring. He welcomed a couple families from Florida to their meetings, helping them feel at home. But witnessing this also made him worry about what could happen if a E-Verify mandate ever came to New York.
“Those of us who are farmworkers in the dairy industry are concerned about this too,” he said. “It puts the status of many workers in the food chain at risk and [people] who have been working here for 10, 15, or even 20 years—like me.”
Florida cities, for the seventh year in a row, are experiencing more growth than any other state in the U.S., according to a new report from U-Haul.
The top destination for movers in 2023 is the Palm Bay-Melbourne market according to U-Haul’s report published Wednesday that measures one-way movers in U-Haul equipment from last year. Last year, it was ranked fourth.
Over 54% of all one-way U-Haul traffic was arriving in Palm Bay-Melbourne, compared to just over 45% departing, the report said. U-Haul said it measured city growth by calculating net gain (or loss) of one-way equipment from customer transactions in 2023. Last year, over 2.5 million one-way transactions with U-Haul equipment were recorded.
The moving company said these migration trends – which lump neighboring cities together for data purposes – do not directly correlate to population or economic growth. Rather, it’s an effective way of seeing how states and cities are attracting and maintaining residents, according to the report.
“Growth in the Palm Bay-Melbourne area has been increasing at an explosive rate,” said Cal Conner, president of U-Haul of Eastern Florida. “The Space Coast has many companies investing in this region and creating jobs such as Embraer, SpaceX, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and L3Harris Technologies. We have a low cost of living compared to many of the northern cities people have left. Add to that our fantastic year-round climate, and you can see why Palm Bay-Melbourne is such a desirable area to live.”
Ocala was ranked the No. 1 growth city in 2022, but slid into the No. 2 spot in 2023. There are seven Florida markets ranked in the top 25, including Sarasota-Bradenton, Kissimmee-St. Cloud and North Port, to name a few.
Here’s a look at the top 25 growth markets in 2023, according to U-Haul:
Palm Bay, Melbourne, FL
Ocala, FL
Charleston-North Charleston, SC
Sarasota-Bradenton, FL
Austin, TX
College Station-Bryan, TX
Charlotte, NC
Huntsville, AL
Dallas, TX
Myrtle Beach-North Myrtle Beach, SC
Kissimmee-St. Cloud, FL
Panama City-Panama City Beach, FL
North Port, FL
Boise, ID
Wake Forest, NC
Conroe, TX
Knoxville, TN
Surprise, AZ
Auburn-Opelika, AL
Lakeland, FL
Murfreesboro, TN
Wilmington, NC
Queen Creek, AZ
Henderson, NV
Nampa, ID
U-Haul calculates growth cities by each city’s net gain (or loss) of one-way equipment from customer transactions in a calendar year. The U-Haul Growth Index is compiled from more than 2.5 million one-way U-Haul truck, trailer and U-Box® moving container transactions that occur annually across the U.S. and Canada. Neighboring cities in U-Haul markets are often packaged together for migration trends purposes.
The U.S. Black Chambers, Inc. (USBC), the national voice of Black business, issued a public statement and Call to Action in support of Black business owners and entrepreneurs of color in the state of Florida.
“As Black Americans grapple with the contentious political climate taking hold in Florida, among other states nationwide, USBC recognizes the importance of uplifting and safeguarding Black voices while advancing our economic power and small business community in the stride for justice and democratic harmony,” said USBC President & CEO Ronald Busby, Sr. “While we remain a nonpartisan business organization with a mission to expand economic opportunity for our community on a global scale, we are aware of the many challenges impacting the everyday lives of Black Floridians and stand with them in their quest for justice and equity.”
As we continue to recognize the dismal challenges facing Black Floridian entrepreneurs and commemorate the Juneteenth holiday this week, we are pleased to announce our Call to Action to support the thousands of Black businesses throughout the state. This Call to Action comes at a time as we highlight the state of Florida has the second-most Black-owned businesses in the country, according to theFlorida Chamber of Commerce. With more than 250,000 Black-owned businesses, research indicates our firms collectively employ nearly 80,000 Floridians and represent an annual payroll of $2.63 billion.
In recognition of these significant contributions, USBC calls upon Florida residents and individuals traveling to stand in solidarity by supporting Black-owned businesses in their communities through our groundbreaking platform, ByBlack. The ByBlack Platform, a first-of-its-kind National Directory and Certification Program, provides a comprehensive resource for locating and engaging with Black-owned businesses across the country.
Within the state of Florida, ByBlack showcases thousands of businesses that offer a wide range of products and services. Additionally, curated city guides within the platform help highlight local Black businesses and events centered on the Juneteenth holiday, commemorating the emancipation of enslaved African Americans.
In partnership with our partners centered on protecting the civil liberties of marginalized Americans, the U.S. Black Chambers, Inc. remains committed to advocating for the rights and success of Black businesses, entrepreneurs, and the broader Black community. Through initiatives like the ByBlack Platform, we aim to bridge the economic gap and create opportunities for long-term prosperity.
