Latino caucus, lawmakers say wave of anti-immigrant bills are 'not Hoosier hospitality'

Members of the Indiana Latino Democratic Caucus gathered at the Statehouse Thursday to push back against a wave of anti-immigrant legislation.

Lawmakers and advocates say the nearly 20 proposed measures make Indiana hostile to immigrants who have invested in the state.

Rep. Victoria Garcia Wilburn (D-Fishers) said, while most of those bills aren’t moving forward, the proposed measures are “not Hoosier hospitality.”

“This is really not a question of legal and illegal. This is about the climate that we’re creating in Indiana,” Garcia Wilburn said.

That climate hits close to home for Ashley Caceres. She’s the executive director of Su Casa, a nonprofit for Latino Hoosiers. In 2020, it expanded into Seymour, which gained national attention for anti-immigrant sentiment.

“It’s just very easy to give this idea of a community to blame for a lot of very hard and complex societal issues,” Caceres said.

Caceres said some of the anti-immigrant measures come from her state representatives — she grew up in Seymour.

“There’s been a message in Seymour that our organization and our staff is not welcome,” she said. “That’s been very hard, because our staff is individuals that grew up and chose Seymour — for a reason — to live.”

READ MORE: Seymour navigates immigration as Trump takes office again
 

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One of those measures is House Bill 1114, which increases criminal penalties for injuries or death caused by someone who didn’t have a driver’s license. Seymour City Council and Jackson County Council passed resolutions asking Indiana’s legislature to pass the measure back in December.

Indiana is one of 31 states that don’t allow undocumented or under-documented immigrants access to legal driver’s licenses.

Some of the bills still moving forward received testimony from people who live in Seymour.

“In Seymour, a lot of the issues around housing, about employment, and around our schools — it has been very easy to create a narrative of blaming our immigrant community,” Caceres said. “So that’s just really disheartening because it’s absolutely not true.”

Five of the measures flagged by the caucus are still moving forward at the Statehouse. Those bills are SB 430, HB 1531, HB 1393, HB 1114 and HB 1032.
 

Lauren is our digital editor. Contact her at lauren@ipbnews.org or follow her on Bluesky at @laurenechapman.bsky.social.