How will David Jolly treat immigrant communities as governor?
David Jolly says that as governor he would welcome immigrants and refugees and celebrate their economic and cultural contributions, reversing a state approach he describes as fighting communities rather than crime, grounded in the fact that immigrants make up 26.6% of Florida's workforce and pay $12.0 billion in state and local taxes each year.[1]
The approach, at a glance
Welcome, not fear
Jolly's stated goal is to return Florida to celebrating immigrant contributions, at a time when immigrants are 26.6% of the state workforce and pay $12.0 billion in state and local taxes annually.[1]
Fight crime, not communities
36% of June 2025 ICE arrests in Florida involved people with no criminal history, a 450%-plus jump. Jolly says the current governor is fighting a community, not crime.[2]
Values before policies
Jolly argues that once Florida agrees on its values, the policies (border security, a pathway to legal status, compassionate reform) become solvable.[3]
David Jolly on immigration: welcoming the immigrant community and celebrating its contributions to Florida.
Why this matters
Florida is an immigrant state. Roughly 23.1% of Floridians are foreign-born, about 2 in 9 residents, and the Miami metro is 41.9% foreign-born, the highest of any major U.S. metro.[4] This isn't a policy abstraction. It's the neighbor, the coworker, the small business owner. The state's tourism, agriculture, and construction economy runs on immigrant labor.
And the ground has shifted. Federal immigration arrests in Florida totaled 20,629 between January 20 and October 15, 2025, about 77 a day, up from roughly 20 a day the year before.[2] Florida now leads the nation in 287(g) enforcement agreements with 327, a 577% increase since January 2025.[5] For some, this is called enforcement. But for many families, it goes deeper than that. It is fear at the school gate and at the job site.
The approach
David Jolly's framing starts with values. "I talk about values a lot before policies," he said standing at Mayor Maurice Ferré Park in Miami. "The policies are easy if we can decide on the values."[3] His position: Florida can solve border security, compassionate reform, and a pathway to legal status and to work, but not until the state agrees on who it wants to be.
He grew up in Miami during the Mariel boatlift, when roughly 125,000 Cubans arrived in six months and his own church began holding bilingual services within half a year.[6] That history is the proof of concept. This isn't a new experiment. It's a return to something Florida already knows how to do.
The contrast Jolly draws is direct. "Our current governor is not fighting crime, he's fighting a community." The data supports the distinction: 36% of June 2025 ICE arrests in Florida involved people with no criminal history.[2] And immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, are far less likely to be incarcerated than native-born Americans, with native-born residents 267% more likely to have been incarcerated by age 33.[7] As governor, Jolly says the state would welcome the immigrant and the refugee and celebrate their contributions, economically and culturally.[6]
This lands both ways. Lead with the heart because welcoming families is the right thing. Lead with the head because immigrants pay $12.0 billion in state and local taxes each year, undocumented immigrants alone pay $1.8 billion, the 4th highest of any state, and mass deportation would carry a one-time cost estimated at $315 billion.[1][8] This isn't charity. It's Florida's own economy. See the campaign's full immigration plan on the Immigration issue page.
Frequently asked questions
Q.What did Jolly say about ICE in Florida?
From the Mayor Ferré Park interview: "People were going to work putting food on the table for their children, sending their kids to school. The community was thriving and safe, and now the president sends in ICE to disrupt communities to try to solve a problem that never existed." The Florida data backs the claim. Federal immigration arrests in Florida hit 20,629 between January 20 and October 15, 2025, with 36% of June arrests involving people with no criminal history, a 450%-plus increase. Florida leads the nation in 287(g) agreements with 327, a 577% increase since January 2025.[2][5]
Q.What does Jolly mean by "values before policies"?
From the Mayor Ferré Park interview: "I talk about values a lot before policies. The policies are easy if we can decide on the values." The structural argument: most immigration policy debates collapse into yelling about specific provisions because the underlying values are contested. If a state agrees on the values, that immigrants are welcomed, that families should not be separated without due process, that economic and cultural contributions are real, the policy disagreements become smaller and more solvable. Jolly invokes Miami history specifically: the Mariel boatlift, the Orange Bowl processing, Mayor Ferré's refugee advocacy, as evidence that Florida already knows how to do this when its values are aligned.[3]
Q.Does Jolly support border security?
Yes. Jolly's framing: "We can solve border security. We can solve compassionate immigration reform. We can solve a pathway to legal status and to work." The structural argument is that border security and humane treatment of immigrants are not opposites, they're both achievable if you start from shared values. His "fights crime, not communities" framing treats border security as a federal issue while pointing out that Florida's state-level immigration enforcement targets people who are already settled, working, and contributing, not people crossing the border.[3]
Q.Why does Jolly oppose ICE doing its job?
Jolly's position is more specific than "oppose ICE." From the Mayor Ferré Park interview, his framing is that ICE is being used as a political tool to disrupt communities that were already thriving, not to address actual public safety threats. The data: 36% of June 2025 ICE arrests in Florida involved people with no criminal history. ICE arrests of non-criminal immigrants in Florida rose more than 450% in mid-2025 versus the prior year. Jolly's position pushes for ICE to focus on actual criminal threats, restore community trust with local law enforcement, and treat working families with due process, not abandon immigration enforcement entirely.[2]
Q.Don't immigrants take jobs from Floridians?
The empirical evidence does not support this. Florida's tourism, agriculture, construction, and hospitality sectors depend on immigrant labor that native-born workers consistently do not apply for at offered wages. American Immigration Council data shows immigrants are 26.6% of the Florida workforce, immigrant entrepreneurs grew by 87,500 since 2016 (largest U.S. state increase), and immigrant-owned businesses employ U.S.-born Floridians at scale. The economic question is not "do immigrants take jobs" but "what happens to the Florida economy if the immigrant workforce leaves," and the post-SB 1718 worker-shortage reports give an early answer.[1][9]
Q.Don't immigrants overwhelm public services?
Immigrants in Florida pay $12.0 billion in state and local taxes annually. Undocumented immigrants alone pay $1.8 billion in Florida state and local taxes, the 4th highest of any state. Federal Social Security and Medicare contributions from undocumented workers flow into trust funds that those workers cannot access. Most fiscal-impact studies find immigrants are net contributors to state budgets over their lifetimes, particularly when second-generation U.S.-born children are included. The "overwhelming public services" framing reflects a snapshot view that ignores tax contributions and long-term economic activity.[1]
Q.Aren't undocumented immigrants criminals by definition?
Civil violations and criminal violations are legally distinct. Most undocumented immigrants are present in violation of civil immigration law (overstaying a visa, entering without inspection), which are civil offenses, not crimes. About 40% of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. entered legally and overstayed their visas. Criminal violations of immigration law are separate categories. The Cato Institute data on incarceration shows that even comparing populations on the same definitional terms, immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, are far less likely to be involved in criminal activity than native-born Americans.[7]
Q.Shouldn't we just enforce the law and deport people here illegally?
A few empirical points complicate this framing. First, mass deportation has been estimated at $315 billion as a one-time cost plus $1.1 to $1.7 trillion in GDP impact per American Immigration Council. Second, ICE arrests of immigrants without criminal history rose 450%-plus in Florida in June 2025, the people being deported are largely working families, not violent criminals. Third, Florida's economy structurally depends on immigrant labor (44.7% of agriculture, 37.8% of construction). Fourth, federal immigration enforcement is a federal question; states cannot meaningfully execute mass deportation without massive federal capacity expansion. Jolly's position is that compassionate reform plus border security plus a pathway is more achievable than mass enforcement.[8][9]
Q.What if I work in agriculture or construction in Florida?
You're in one of the sectors most directly affected by Florida's immigration enforcement environment. Immigrants make up 44.7% of Florida's agriculture workforce and 37.8% of the construction workforce per American Immigration Council analysis. SB 1718's E-Verify mandate has produced documented worker shortages, delayed projects, and increased labor costs in these sectors since July 2023. Jolly's position takes the structural view: Florida's tourism, construction, and agriculture economy depends on immigrant labor and you cannot fix it through state-level enforcement alone.[9]
Q.What if I am a DACA recipient in Florida?
Florida has 20,800 active DACA recipients as of March 2024, the 5th-largest state DACA population. DACA recipients were brought to the U.S. as children, met eligibility criteria including arrival before age 16 and continuous residence since 2007, and have no significant criminal history. DACA has been in legal limbo since 2017, only renewals are processed, no new applications. Florida's DACA recipients live, work, and pay taxes here but face uncertain long-term legal status. Jolly's call for "a pathway to legal status and to work" structurally includes the DACA population, though the actual pathway requires federal congressional action.[10]
Q.What if I am Cuban-American in Florida?
Cuban-Americans are the largest single immigrant community in Florida and historically the most politically powerful. The Cuban Adjustment Act (1966) gives Cuban nationals admitted after January 1, 1959 a legal pathway to permanent residence after one year, a uniquely favorable status not extended to any other national-origin group. Cuban-Americans have politically diverse views on immigration. Jolly's grounding of his immigration position in Miami history, Mariel, Pedro Pan, Mayor Ferré, is a deliberate appeal to the Cuban-American memory of being welcomed when many other groups were not.[11]
Q.What if I am Haitian or Venezuelan in Florida?
Florida has the largest Haitian-American population in the U.S., concentrated in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, and the largest Venezuelan-American population, concentrated in Doral and Miami-Dade. Both communities have faced concerns about Temporary Protected Status, expedited deportations, and the end of humanitarian parole programs in recent years. Unlike Cuban-Americans, Haitians and Venezuelans don't have access to the Cuban Adjustment Act's expedited pathway. Jolly's position calling for "compassionate immigration reform" and "a pathway to legal status and to work" is structurally aimed at these communities, those who fled crisis but don't fit the narrow Cold War-era Cuban legal framework.[12]
Q.What did Mayor Ferré say about refugees that Jolly references?
In the Mayor Ferré Park interview, Jolly recalls: "We're standing in Mayor Ferré Park, and it was the mayor who said, if we fail to embrace the refugee, we might as well throw the Statue of Liberty into the East River." Maurice Antonio Ferré (1935-2019) was Miami's first Hispanic mayor (six terms, 1973-1985), the first Puerto Rican-born mayor of a major U.S. mainland city, and a member of President Ford's Presidential Advisory Committee on Refugees (1975). He oversaw Miami through the Mariel boatlift and is sometimes called "the father of modern-day Miami."[13]
Sources
- American Immigration Council, Immigrants in Florida, https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/press-release/immigrants-are-key-economic-growth-florida/ · 2024-01-01
- WUSF (Deportation Data Project), https://www.wusf.org/politics-issues/2026-03-10/who-did-ice-arrest-in-florida-last-year · 2026-03-10
- David Jolly, immigration interview, Mayor Ferré Park, Miami, https://davidjolly.com/immigration-interview-miami-ferre-park · 2025-08-01
- U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey, https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2024/04/where-do-immigrants-live.html · 2024-04-01
- U.S. Department of Homeland Security, https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/09/30/weeklong-ice-operation-state-and-local-partners-leads-arrest-more-400-illegal · 2025-09-30
- David Jolly, As Governor, Immigration (video), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0OAN0qc-XE · 2026-05-21
- Cato Institute, Immigrant incarceration rates, https://www.cato.org/blog/immigrants-have-lower-lifetime-incarceration-rates-native-born-americans · 2025-04-01
- American Immigration Council, Mass Deportation report, https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/report/mass-deportation/ · 2024-10-01
- American Immigration Council, Florida workforce data, https://map.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/locations/florida/ · 2024-01-01
- USCIS, Immigration and Citizenship Data, https://www.uscis.gov/tools/reports-and-studies/immigration-and-citizenship-data · 2024-03-31
- U.S. Government Publishing Office, Cuban Adjustment Act (Public Law 89-732), https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-80/pdf/STATUTE-80-Pg1161.pdf · 1966-11-02
- Migration Policy Institute, Florida State Profile, https://www.migrationpolicy.org/data/state-profiles/state/demographics/FL · 2024-01-01
- Encyclopedia summary, Maurice Ferré, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Ferr%C3%A9 · 2019-09-19
This isn't about party. It's about who Florida decides to be.
Florida already knows how to welcome people. Have a question for David? Visit the Town Hall and ask.