MIAMI (AP) — Hurricane Milton It is expected to unleash its greatest strength on hundreds of thousands of immigrants who, most of them, do not speak English Latin Americans harvesting oranges and tomatoes in the fields along Floridas I-4 corridor, washing dishes in restaurants, cleaning hotel rooms and working construction.

For the Spanish speakers and a smaller number of African refugees , new lives in the US were already a daily struggle due to the language barrier and lack of resources.

Milton has made these obstacles a matter of life and death.

Migrants in the eye of the storm

Florida is home to at least 4.8 million immigrants, according to the Pew Research Center. After Miami, Orlando and Tampa are the metropolitan areas with the highest number of immigrants, the majority of whom come from Latin American countries such as Mexico and Venezuela.

In Central Florida, most migrants work in the hospitality industry, construction and picking strawberries, berries, tomatoes and oranges. Many newcomers don’t have access to TVs, computers or the Internet and don’t know where to find information about Milton, a powerful storm that prompted state and local authorities to order evacuations in the areas where most of these immigrants live.

About 250,000 Mexicans live in the area where Hurricane Milton would hit hard, and many fear leaving their trailer homes or being deported.

“There is resistance to going to a shelter,” said Juan Sabines Guerrero, Mexico’s consul general in Orlando.

“There is no time to think about it,” he urged fellow Florida voters. “They have to do it.”

Sabines said local authorities have assured consular officials “that they will not ask about immigration status.”

Fighting the fear of deportation to save lives

Guerrero and his staff conducted several interviews with Spanish-language radio stations in the area and shared an interactive map about shelters in the area on social media platforms. They also have WhatsApp channels and an emergency line where people can call.

Immigration advocates and consulate officials have reached out in the cities of Tampa, Orlando and central Florida to help with evacuation plans and otherwise prepare. They share information in Spanish, French and African languages ​​and make calls, send text messages and share messages on social media with information about shelters, evacuations and places to pick up sandbags, food, water, shelters and gasoline.

“In emergency situations like a hurricane, it’s not easy to find information in Spanish,” said Jessica Ramirez, general coordinator at the Farmworker Association, which serves more than 10,000 immigrants.

Nongovernmental organizations such as the Farmworker Association of Florida, the Florida Immigrant Coalition and Hope CommUnity Center have translated information from state and local authorities and shared it in Spanish via WhatsApp groups, Facebook and social media channels.

Like other organizations that help low-income Latino families in the area, they have received hundreds of calls from Spanish-speaking immigrants who can’t find information in their language and don’t understand English, asking for details about the storm.

A Mexican mother with a son who needs a ventilator

Lupita Lara lives with her family near Orlando and has a 23-year-old son with special needs who requires a ventilator every night to sleep. She tried to apply online to request space at a special needs shelter, but she encountered technical difficulties and after three hours decided to call the Farmworker Association.

“I needed their help,” said Lara, 47, who came from Mexico, speaks mostly Spanish and spoke English to call the shelter office. “There are no people who speak Spanish when we call,” she said of some offices in Orange County.

A lawyer from the Farmworker Association conducted a three-way conversation and helped translate the conversation. The shelter’s office confirmed they received her request, but told her she is not guaranteed space, Lara said. She now needs to go to one of the shelters and see if they have room.

“The problem is that people are afraid to call the authorities, so they call us,” said Felipe Souza-Lazaballet, executive director of the Hope CommUnity Center. “That’s why we’re essentially coordinating all of this information.”

Advocates told the AP that other challenges they see include the lack of economic resources to buy food, water or supplies, and fear among the undocumented population.

Government policies create fear that endangers the lives of migrants

In 2023, Florida passed one of the strictest immigration laws in the country. It criminalized the introduction of people without permanent legal status into the state, invalidated all U.S. government identification, and blocked local governments from issuing them identification cards. Florida hospitals that receive Medicaid must ask patients about immigration status, and businesses employing 25 or more people must verify the legal status of their employees.

Some advocates told the Associated Press on Wednesday that immigrants fear they could be deported if they go to a shelter. They have the same fear when they ask for food or sandbags to protect their homes, even as authorities and the same advocates say they will not ask for any identification.

They also fear that if they evacuate and move to another state, they will not be able to return because of Florida law that imposes fines for transporting immigrants without legal permission.

“There is a lot of fear of deportation or worse, that people live on a daily basis, so these fears are highlighted in times of disaster when vulnerability increases,” said Dominique O’Connor, climate justice organizer with the Farmworker Association of Florida.

O’Connor said some shelters and locations that provide sandbags require some form of identification, and there are well-meaning military or police officers handing out water, which is “very intimidating” to immigrants.