LWV forum looks at immigration amid Donald Trump’s mass deportation plans

A panel hosted by the League of Women Voters (LWV) of Orange County shed some light onto immigration policy in Florida and elsewhere as President-elect Donald Trump readies to take office this month.

Dealing with staff shortages, Florida’s hospitality industry wanted to hire undocumented immigrants and create a special permit program as an exemption from stricter state immigration rules.

“If the proposal sounds unfamiliar, it’s because it actually never came to light. Instead, the industry gave up on the idea,” said Orlando Weekly journalist McKenna Schueler, who broke the story last month, as she spoke at the immigration forum.

“Instead the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association specifically decided to back a push to ease Florida’s child labor laws to allow older teenagers to be able to work more hours and such. So that was that.”

The LWV hosted a panel with Schueler, immigration experts and community leaders to discuss immigration in the Sunshine State in a wide-ranging conversation. The themes included how immigration affects Florida and Orange County, where many work in hospitality and agriculture, and what could happen if Trump carries out mass deportations. WESH TV anchor Nancy Alvarez, a Cuban immigrant, was the moderator of the one-hour discussion.

An estimated 1.2 million undocumented immigrants live in Florida, and some families are living in fear about being forced out of the country.

Felipe Sousa-Lazaballet, Executive Director of the Hope CommUnity Center in Apopka, is a Brazilian immigrant who comes from a “mixed status family,” which some are citizens and others are not.

“This last Christmas was so difficult, because it felt like it could have been the last time that we could be together. That could have been the last time that we could touch each other across the table and say, ‘Merry Christmas,’” Sousa-Lazaballet said. “That is exactly what it’s like on the ground. Our families are living in anxiety.”

If immigrants are mass deported, they could face nightmarish prospects to get deportation proceedings.

“They’re only two immigration courts in Florida. The Orlando immigration court has 250,000 pending cases right now,” said Giselle Martinez, legal director of the Orlando Center for Justice. “So imagine the backlog that this is going to cause going forward.”

The full discussion was recorded on the LWV’s Facebook page.