As the Florida Senate Judiciary Committee gets ready to hear immigration-enforcement bill S.B. 2040 on Monday, Arizona-like measures have been cut in other state legislatures.
The Immigration Policy Center points out:
The legislative graveyard got a little bit bigger this week as lawmakers in Mississippi pronounced a series of restrictive immigration measures dead. More than 30 immigration-related bills—including an Arizona-style enforcement bill—failed to meet a legislative deadline due to disagreements over the laws’ impact on the business community. Mississippi joins nine other states (Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Virginia, Wyoming) where legislators have cut Arizona-style enforcement bills—bills that are, according to the Washington Posteditorial board, causing many businesses to speak out for fear of sharing Arizona’s economic fate.
The Florida Independent reported last week that at a community forum, South Florida workers, religious leaders, and immigration advocates denounced the current immigration-enforcement bills proposed by Florida legislators. They specifically pointed to S.B. 2040, which would force local law enforcement agencies to enforce federal immigration law. Several speakers said the problem is that police officers are already asking about immigration status and that arrest can lead to deportation.
S.B. 2040 would require law enforcement and criminal justice agencies to coordinate with the federal government on the identification of unauthorized immigrants and the enforcement of immigration laws.
It would also allow for local law enforcement to transfer unauthorized immigrants accused or convicted of a crime to be handed over to federal authorities.
The bill would direct county sheriffs, the Department of Corrections, and the Department of Law Enforcement to fully implement Section 287(g), a federal immigration enforcement program of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and would also require the Department of Law Enforcement to establish and maintain an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security “to implement a program through which fingerprints submitted by local law enforcement agencies during the arrest and booking process are checked against federal databases in order to assess the immigration status of individuals in custody.”
Florida has already implemented the Secure Communities system, a federal immigration enforcement program that checks fingerprints of all detainees with federal databases.
