JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Imagine your favorite restaurant, grocery store, or farmer’s market with limited produce. That could soon be a reality.
Latino truck drivers are encouraging truckers everywhere to boycott Florida in response to the state’s immigration laws.
Tio Moralez, a Jacksonville restaurant owner, told News4JAX he buys veggies for his restaurant and the changes could impact him.
Title 42, the pandemic-era public health law set to curb migration to protect public health, ended last week.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation to combat illegal immigration and critics said it could lead to police profiling.
The law requires employers with 25 or more employees to use an E-verify system, hospitals accepting Medicaid must ask patients if they are U.S. citizens and report it to the governor, and it invalidates out-of-state driver’s licenses to “unauthorized immigrants.”
Moralez said many of his employees left the state and he doesn’t know what that means for his business.
“Do you know why they left?” Moralez said. “Because everybody is scared. I have product coming from Georgia to here. All the meat and everything… so if they don’t come — I can’t do much.”
Thousands of pounds of fruits and veggies are brought to the Jacksonville Farmers Market every week. The owners said everything has been steady, but some said that could change with truck drivers standing against Florida’s immigration laws.
Latino truck drivers on social media are threatening to not deliver goods to Florida because of attacks on immigration.
Nancy Quinones is the president of the Puerto Rican Chamber of Commerce and Resource Center. She works with people – including truck drivers and non-American-born citizens working in fields and markets who have questions and are worried about what will happen next.
“How that person is going to drop the keys at the schools?” Quinones said. “How that person is going to find a job?”
Jose, an unloader, said it’s hard work, but it’s good work.
“The prices are probably going to go up and it’s just going to hurt everybody. If the trucks don’t come...,” Jose said.
The message they say drivers are trying to send is clear.
“That is a form for them to let them or to let us know that we are here and we are important,” Quinones said.