Businesses close to protest Florida’s immigration law

A Homestead open-air strip mall of mostly familyowned Hispanic businesses is usually packed in the afternoon with people eating at restaurants, buying medication at a pharmacy or transferring money to their loved ones in Latin America.

These South Florida businesses are credited with keeping retail in downtown Homestead alive as more and more businesses congregate around the big box stores along US 1 and further east.

But on Thursday afternoon the Pioneer Mall, 224 Washington Ave., appeared to be a ghost town with nearly all of its restaurants and stores closed. Mexican restaurants, taquerías and a bakery also shut down in neighboring Florida City. Flyers posted on the businesses’ doors and windows alerted clients that they were shutting down June 1 in support of the immigrant community — the target of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ immigration crackdown.

In the evening, around 500 people marched in downtown Homestead, waving flags from Guatemala, Nicaragua, Mexico and the United States and chanting in Spanish: “The people united will never be defeated.”

Similar scenes were reported across the Sunshine State, from the farmworker town of Immokalee and the hurricanestricken city of Fort Myers in Southwest Florida to Jacksonville and Orlando, in what many people called “un día sin inmigrantes” — a day without immigrants.

In Homestead, the agricultural center of South Florida, numerous workers went on strike, boycotted area businesses and called their state elected officials. In Immokalee, one of the major centers of tomato growing in the United States, hundreds marched waving Mexican and American flags while chanting in Spanish “sí se puede,” which roughly translates to “yes we can.”

Last month, DeSantis signed a bill into law that limits undocumented migrant labor, ends community-funded programs that give undocumented immigrants identification cards and toughens penalties against those who transport undocumented immigrants into the state.

Florida’s law requires that hospitals track and report the immigration status of patients, that local governments withhold services from people who cannot provide proof of citizenship and that all employers with 25 or more employees verify the immigration status of most workers using the federal electronic system, EVerify. Although most of the provisions in the law will take effect July 1, the employer penalties do not take effect until July 1, 2024.

‘I don’t think we are doing anything wrong’

Alberto Valle, 38, told the Miami Herald that he and 14 other employees of a landscaping company didn’t go to work on Thursday. The father of five and Homestead resident made the difficult decision of losing a day’s salary even though he sends money to his wife and kids in Guatemala so they can buy groceries, clothes and medicine.