ATLANTA — Andrea Hinojosa is an aid worker embedded in rural South Georgia’s immigrant farmworker communities.

Through the Southeast Georgia Communities Project, a nonprofit she founded in 1995, Hinojosa has for years driven undocumented farmworkers to doctor appointments in the Jacksonville, Fla. area, a medical hub for the region. The patients can’t go to the hospitals by themselves because they aren’t eligible for Georgia driver’s licenses.

Starting next month, the road trips to Jacksonville could land Hinojosa in jail – a product of a bill Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law in May, which imposes criminal penalties and steep fines on people who transport immigrants without legal status into Florida. The move, which DeSantis said is aimed at restricting human smuggling, will have significant implications for the South Georgia immigrant communities who routinely cross into Florida for leisure, health care, or family reasons.

“It’s another fear factor that people are going to have to deal with,” Hinojosa said. “I was telling (an employee), ‘I guess our trips to Florida will have to cease.’ You know, we can’t take that risk. We both have families. … There’s nothing we can do about it.”

The new immigration law goes into effect July 1, but Hinojosa said a broad chilling effect is already being felt, with families that have undocumented members cancelling Florida vacations.

When one of Hinojosa’s own relatives graduated from a school in Dade City, near Tampa, her sister didn’t make the trip south from Georgia because her husband is undocumented.

“We talk to people about their summer plans. ‘Our kids want to go to Disney World. We want to go relax on a beach,’” she said. “That’s not going to be a reality for them anymore.”

In Florida, immigrant populations have organized protests and work stoppages to signal their opposition to the new law. The national Hispanic civil rights group LULAC issued a Florida travel advisory.

In addition to targeting the transport of immigrants without legal status, the legislation cracks down on private employers hiring undocumented workers. It will also invalidate driver’s licenses issued to undocumented immigrants in other states and it will require hospitals that receive Medicaid dollars to ask patients about their immigration status.

Over the summer, the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights (GLAHR) had initially planned to celebrate its annual conference in the panhandle town of Laguna Beach, Fla. In the wake of the immigration bill’s passing, the Atlanta-based nonprofit and advocacy group canceled. Its roughly 200 members will now meet in-state.

…continued

swipe to next page