Orlando Florida Immigration Attorney Law Blog

A 15-year-old girl lost five family members, including her entire immediate family, in the Interstate 75 accident in Florida last weekend. The teenager is an undocumented immigrant who many believed would face deportation/removal. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) has since said that "reports of her facing deportation are completely false."

The teenager's family emigrated from Brazil when she was only two years old. "The family wanted to obtain legal status but had no laws to help them do so," said a family friend and pastor of their church. Like other undocumented immigrants who came here as young children, the teenager doesn't know anyone in Brazil and cannot speak Portuguese.

As the immigration debate continues on the national level, Florida legislators are also taking steps to reform immigration law. Some of these reforms could help immigrant communities in Florida; others could make things more difficult.

According to The Florida Independent, some of the 2012 immigration bills filed in the legislature include:

• E-Verify bill: Filed by Representative Gayle Harrell, R-Port St. Lucie, and Senator Thad Altman, R-Melbourne, this bill would require employers to use E-Verify in order to determine if a job applicant is authorized to work in the United States.
• Restrictive Driving Privilege Card / Illegal Immigrant Residing in State bill: Filed by Senator Rene Garcia, R-Hialeah, this bill would allow the Department of Highway Safety (DHS) to issue restrictive driving privilege cards to undocumented immigrants.

Last year, the Obama administration stated that it wanted to focus its immigration enforcement efforts on "threats to public safety, repeat immigration law violators, recent border entrants and immigration fugitives," taking the pressure off undocumented immigrants who have been in the U.S. for a long time and haven't committed a crime. Unfortunately, even U.S. citizens and obvious crime victims continue to face deportation/detention/removal.

Now, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has created a hotline for individuals detained by the U.S. government who are potentially U.S. citizens or crime victims. The hotline is a 24/7 toll-free hotline staffed by ICE personnel. According to an ICE press release, the hotline is meant to "ensure that individuals being held by state or local law enforcement on immigration detainers are properly notified about their potential removal from the country and are made aware of their rights."

The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2012, which includes the controversial payroll tax cut, also increases funding to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). If the bill is passed, ICE will receive more than $50 million than last year, including funding for 34,000 additional detention beds and for immigration enforcement (deportation/detention/removal). Furthermore, U.S. Customs and Border Protection would receive $11.7 billion, which is $362 million more than last year.

The additional detention beds will put U.S. detention capacity at the largest it has been since ICE was created.