No playing Spanish-language music: Many immigrants say they have new rules for driving

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: NPR

July 12, 2025 8:00 AM ET


Outside an evangelical church on the outskirts of Tampa, Fla., half a dozen immigrant families wait in the sweltering Sunday heat. The men wear bright, colorful shirts while the women are dressed in traditional Guatemalan embroidered clothing. The service has ended, but no one is rushing to their cars. Instead, they wait for rides home.

The reason is simple: fear. Since Florida granted highway patrol officers the authority to detain drivers based on their immigration status during routine traffic stops, getting behind the wheel has become a calculated risk for many immigrants across the state. Every trip — to work, to church, to the grocery store — now carries the possibility of detention, regardless of legal status. That has led to new, unwritten rules of the road.

Rule 1: no foreign flags or Spanish-language stickers or advertisements on the car. "When companies have [ads] in Spanish you know, it's a big target," says Ashley Ambrocio, age 19. She's a U.S. citizen and is driving parishioners today. Rule 2: Try to ride with people you know and trust. They should also be people who are in the country legally.

Ambrocio moves to Rule 3: no Spanish-language music. "If you guys are gonna be driving to work, turn the radio on to English radio," she advises people. "English music. Some country music, so they can't tell it's a Spanish car in there."

Read more: https://www.npr.org/2025/07/12/nx-s1-5437957/no-playing-spanish-language-music-many-immigrants-say-they-have-new-rules-for-driving

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Welcome to the world of some of us - Driving While Black: Racial Profiling On Our Nation's Highways (and that report was published over 25 years ago and little has changed, with a "new" group now added to the profiling).