Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) at a press conference at the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office on Friday announced a series of actions the Sunshine State is taking to address President Biden’s border crisis, making it clear that Florida is fighting back against these “catastrophic” policies.
Biden’s first day in office, DeSantis said, “marked a period where this country” opened up its southern border, and the consequences have been dire.
“What we have seen in the year and a half, during this administration, over three million people illegally crossed the U.S. Mexico border,” he said, noting that many of these illegal immigrants are coming from all over the globe — “Central America, South America, the Caribbean, Africa, [and] the Middle East.”
“If they just get to the southern border, you come in, they’re just going to release you into society. And so, what has that gotten us? It’s gotten us record human trafficking, record sex trafficking, and record drug trafficking,” DeSantis said, pointing directly to the fentanyl crisis and identifying it as the leading cause of death for ages 18-45.
“Where is the fentanyl coming into the country from? Ninety-five percent of its coming from the U.S. Mexico border,” he explained, noting that the Mexican cartels like Biden’s border policies and “are eating our lunch every single day at the border” while “taking advantage of a lot of innocent people and hurting a lot of innocent people as a result.”
“So those policies of Biden, his border policies, have been an abject failure,” the governor said, highlighting Florida’s responsibility to “fight back,” even as the Biden administration and the left aim to take away Title 42.
Migrants from Colombia cross the United States and Mexico border to turn themselves over to authorities on May 13, 2021, in Yuma, Arizona (Anna Moneymaker/RINGO CHIU/AFP via Getty Images).
“It’s gonna be like, unlike anything we’ve ever seen. In fact, you’re looking at 18,000 additional illegal aliens every day if Title 42 was to be repealed, and that would end up being over 6.5 million illegal aliens every year. That’s more than the population of 33 states in this country,” DeSantis said. “And so we have got to put a stop to this now.”
While he said Florida has taken action, such as banning sanctuary cities, more needs to be done. The first additional action the state will take involves $12 million for the creation of a “strike force of state and local law enforcement to be able to interdict illegal drug smuggling, human trafficking, as well as illegals that are illegally carrying firearms throughout the state of Florida,” which has already started operations in Northwest Florida.
“The second thing we are doing is we have today filed a petition with the Florida Supreme Court requesting an order to impanel a statewide grand jury to examine international human smuggling networks that bring illegal aliens across the southern border, and ultimately, to states like Florida,” he explained:
The grand jury will examine the effects of those international networks on Florida and how they have violated Florida law, and the purpose of the grand jury will be to investigate individuals and organizations that are actively working with foreign nationals, drug cartels, coyotes to illegally smuggle minors, some as young as two years old, across the border and into Florida. This is just wrong what they’re doing, and we are going to go after it.
Additionally, the grand jury will investigate smugglers’ methods to transport unaccompanied alien children, as well as local governments that are “aiding this smuggling scheme by intentionally violating our state law against sanctuary jurisdictions.”
As the third action, DeSantis is signing Senate Bill 1808 “to fight illegal immigration to further protect Floridians from Biden’s border crisis.” The bill itself “penalizes any of these contractors that the federal government is hiring to dump illegal aliens in our state, and so, they will be ineligible for any tax contract or anything like that,” according to the governor.
“The bill also requires law enforcement agencies operating with county detention facilities to enter into a written agreement with ICE to assist in enforcing federal immigration laws by identifying illegal aliens who do not belong in the United States,” he said.
“We don’t want to be like San Francisco or L.A. or some of these states where they’re basically just sanctuary jurisdictions, and the rule of law has effectively been suspended. So that’s not gonna fly in the state of Florida,” DeSantis said, later adding, “Today, Florida fights back”: