Laura dePaz Cabrera’s office has been flooded with panicked calls.
President Donald Trump’s immigration policies and recent executive orders have Gainesville’s immigrant community contacting her office, dePaz Cabrera Immigration Law, nonstop.
Everyone is expressing similar feelings of fear and uncertainty – and Cabrera says this is just the beginning.
“Our system is beyond broken,” said Cabrera, 42.
Activities that U.S. citizens do multiple times a day without thought can be risky, she said. Driving without a license, texting while driving and jaywalking are all laws that don’t take much to violate and can fall under the new broad terms of what constitutes as criminal, Cabrera said.
In Florida, immigration laws implemented in February created harsher constraints for undocumented immigrants living in the state. Gov. Ron DeSantis led the changes, which include harsher penalties for crimes committed by undocumented immigrants and the end of in-state tuition for undocumented students.
These laws were quickly followed by an agreement that allowed ICE to train and authorize local sheriff offices to detain and deport undocumented immigrants in Florida.
“If you’re here illegally, just know the law is the law,” DeSantis said.
Trump’s executive orders attempt to tear down several long-standing systems that were put in place to streamline the immigration process, Cabrera said. The parole process and the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol’s CBP One mobile application were made to minimize the number of undocumented people entering the U.S.
With Trump’s new orders, however, those elements disappear, she said.
“We are seeing policies now that are not only going to cause an extreme amount of additional bureaucratic inefficiencies, but are going to eliminate legal pathways,” Cabrerea said.
The federal government has repealed Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans and Haitians, and recently, U.S. CBP One became CBP Home, which has a new feature – Intent to Depart.
On his first day of office, Trump tried to eliminate birthright citizenship.
Ediberto Roman, a Florida International University professor of law, said birthright citizenship has been supported by the 14th Amendment in various cases for over 100 years, and that over 90 countries worldwide employ birthright citizenship. A third appellate court decision this week kept the order blocked for now.
But there are very few rights offered to undocumented immigrants, he said. They don’t have the ability to exercise Fourth Amendment rights, and especially in Florida, they have no political say.
“I don't think there's a safe harbor anywhere for these individuals. It's a frightening time. It's a scary time,” he said.
Matthew Urra, the president of UF’s Hispanic-Latine Student Association, said he has felt this personally, and knows countless other students going through the same experience.
“The anxiety, the fear, the trauma, is through the roof,” he said.
Urra, a 21-year-old political science and finance senior, said he never expected to be dealing with the current political climate when he joined the association. When he took his position as president, he said he expected to organize cultural events and celebrate his community, not organize college students into information and support systems.
“We need to tread very cautiously in how we proceed, because at the end of the day, there are a lot of eyes on us,” he said.
Urra said he’s shocked that policies like birthright citizenship, which have been long established as part of the U.S. Constitution, are even being challenged.
“We might have been spoiled in being able to enjoy what was fought for by previous generations,” Urra said. “Then it all got slashed and taken away overnight.”
The association has had to make changes over the past few months, restructuring to add new positions and new roles, but Urra said it’s been difficult. He said it’s disheartening to see the rights that were the result of generations of fighting get instantly upended.
He said the effects of the imposed policies run deeper than the surface level, and they only serve to blame and target a community instead of fixing real political issues.
“We can't celebrate our cultures comfortably, or be proud of different heritages, because of what you're passing,” he said.