A Florida bill demanding all businesses use a federal database to check employees’ immigration status cleared its final House committee Thursday, despite silence from the Senate.
HB 197, co-sponsored by Republican Reps. Berny Jacques and Kiyan Michael, is one of the few bills the House has fast-tracked without a Senate companion. It would expand a 2023 law championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis to require all employers — not just public businesses and larger private ones — to use the online database, called E-Verify.
“We may not be able to get it a 100% right, but we have to least take a big bite out of a huge apple,” Michael said in the House Commerce Committee. She recounted how her son was killed in a car crash by a twice-deported migrant, questioning, “If it was your child, would it matter?”
Michael responded to concerns raised by the committee’s Democrats and the AFL, a labor group. Both claimed E-Verify should be tackled by the federal government — not through “patchwork” regulation by the states.
The measure changes existing law, which only mandates public businesses and private companies with more than 25 employees use the online system. This is Jacques’ second attempt to pass the expansion, which cleared the House in 2025 but died in the Senate.
This year, the Senate has yet to file companion legislation.
More than 475,000 small businesses in Florida have fewer than 20 employees, according to a 2025 report by the Small Business Administration. Not counting businesses without employees — of which there are more than 2 million — there are fewer than 518,000 total small businesses.
The move to tamp down illegal immigration comes amid a national conservative push. Between January and September, the Trump administration assisted in the deportation or removal of over 2 million migrants illegally in the country.
Gov. Ron DeSantis has magnified those efforts in Florida, boasting two state-run detention centers and requiring all 67 counties to partner with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
In 2023, then-Sen. Blaise Ingoglia sponsored the law to require private businesses with at least 25 employees to use E-Verify. It was part of a large immigration package that also required Medicaid-accepting hospitals to annually report how many undocumented immigrants they treat, the Phoenix previously reported.
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