Walmart cuts some Florida jobs after immigration rulings

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Walmart Inc. is terminating some jobs in Florida after recent Supreme Court rulings about the legal residency of migrants, the latest sign that such orders are hitting U,S, workplaces.

The company has told employees in at least two stores in the state that they would lose jobs if they don’t get new work authorizations, said people familiar with the matter.

The exact number of job cuts was unclear.

The terminations are connected to I-9 forms that U.S. employers use to check the identity and employment authorization of staff, the people said.

A company spokeswoman declined to comment.

Walmart is among U.S. companies responding to recent rulings by the Supreme Court that are expected to affect hundreds of thousands of migrants. The court ended legal protections for as many as half a million people from countries including Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, who were allowed to legally enter the country during the Biden administration.

That decision followed an earlier ruling by the Supreme Court clearing the way for the Trump administration to end deportation protections for roughly 350,000 Venezuelans who have been allowed to live and work in the US under the Temporary Protected Status program.

The Trump administration has not yet clarified how it intends to deal with those who are set to lose their permission to be in the US. But immigration enforcement officials have said anyone in the country without permission could face arrest and deportation.

The administration has launched an ad campaign to encourage migrants to leave on their own, offering travel assistance and a stipend of up to $1,000.

Walt Disney Co. in recent weeks notified Florida-based employees who are losing temporary legal residency in the U.S. that their jobs would be terminated.

“Disney sets the standard — other companies in our economy look toward them,” said Florida State Representative Anna Eskamani, a Democrat running for mayor of Orlando. Central Florida is home to thousands of Venezuelans, many of whom supported Donald Trump in last year’s presidential election.

“We don’t have enough workers as it is, so this is a bad situation that’s getting worse,” Eskamani told Bloomberg.

Walmart, the biggest retailer in the world, has about 4,600 stores in the US with each location typically employing a few hundred employees. Most of its 1.6 million US workers are hourly store employees.