'We are the Bogeyman': Tense Debate Follows Bill Banning Community IDs for Illegal Immigrants

TALLAHASSEE, FL—A bill banning local governments from providing community IDs to illegal immigrants passed its final committee stop Wednesday afternoon, though not before facing claims of "inhumanity".

SB 1174 builds on a sweeping immigration package passed last session. One of the provisions prevented local governments from providing money to nonprofits so they could create community IDs for illegal immigrants. According to bill sponsor Republican Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, some counties have since found a loophole: simply creating the community IDs themselves.

"Last year's immigration bill said that the local governments cannot appropriate money to nonprofits for the purpose of creating community IDs. Once we put that pre-emption in law, you had three or four counties that said, 'hey, we can't do this, so we're just going to issue the IDs ourselves'," He told The Floridian.

Community IDs are mostly issued to people with no other identification, such as the homeless, or parents enrolling their children in schools. However, Republicans worry that some of these IDs are also being issued to illegal immigrants.

Democratic Sen. Shevrin Jones was strongly opposed to the legislation, calling it both "unnecessary" and "inhumane".

"Every year we are coming with some type of...inhumane legislation in how we handle human beings who have fled their countries for various reasons," he said, explaining that immigrants in the middle of the naturalization process would be disallowed from a community ID under the bill. "What harm is being done to anybody with an ID card? What harm and what problem are we trying to solve with an ID card?"

"These are not aliens, these are human beings. Counties want to know who's in their county and their city, and we want to make a bogeyman out of it and say that it's the problem and it's not. You know who the bogeymans are? We are. The ID card is not the problem, it's turning out that we are," He added.

In his close on the bill, Ingoglia argued that the bill was necessary to prevent human, drug, and sex trafficking over the border, stating that "when you give an unlawful alien something, you're actually perpetuating more illegal immigration. human trafficking, drug trafficking, sex trafficking,"

The bill passed the Senate Rules Committee down party lines, and will next head to the Senate Floor.