Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) introduced two new bills aimed at limiting immigration enforcement operations amid her unannounced visit to a Broward County immigrant detention facility.
No PREJUDICE Act
The Broward County Representative recently introduced the No PREJUDICE (No Person’s Race, Ethnicity, Job, or Use of Dialect or Inflection is Cause for Enforcement) Act. The legislation seeks to bar the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from targeting individuals “based on perceived race, ethnicity, religion, gender, or sexual orientation.”
The legislation aims to bar immigration officers from targeting people “at a location associated with the recruitment or transportation of individuals for informal or temporary employment, including bus stops, car washes, or agricultural sites.”
Additionally, it prevents immigration agents from targeting people participating in a “particular hobby, leisure activity, job, or career,” and people who speak any language other than English, or who speak English with a perceived accent.
Build Homes, Not Hate Act
The second bill, the Build Homes, Not Hate Act, “would claw back $70 billion of ICE funds” from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBA) and divert those funds to combat the U.S.’s “housing cost crisis and end homelessness, once and for all.”
The funds would be used to create roughly 200,000 “new affordable and market-rate housing units” in expensive zones like South Florida.
The remaining funds would be invested in “supporting housing and transitional services to every single homeless person in America.”
South Florida's Affordability Crisis
Affordability issues appear to be hitting South Florida hard, especially in the housing sector, as reports indicate that the Miami metropolitan area has become more expensive than New York City for the first time on record.
According to the Miami Herald, for someone to comfortably afford an average two-bedroom apartment in the region, they “would need to earn roughly $47 an hour, or $97,000 a year,” a figure that is significantly above the state’s $14 minimum wage.
