By Jim Turner, The News Service of Florida
TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Ron DeSantis focused on national politics Friday as he rolled out a series of proposals for the upcoming 2022 legislative session aimed at the border policies of President Joe Biden.
DeSantis called for state lawmakers to “fight against the Biden border crisis” by passing legislation to expand a law targeting so-called “sanctuary cities” and to bolster E-Verify employment rules.
During a news conference at Jacksonville International Airport, DeSantis also said he wants the Legislature to bar contractors from doing business with the state and local governments if the contractors work with the Biden administration to transport people who entered the country illegally. In addition, DeSantis said private companies assisting the federal government with migrants should be required to cover costs of law enforcement, health care and other services.
“We just cannot be doing contracts with companies that are knowingly and recklessly facilitating, bringing people here into our state illegally,” DeSantis said.
The airport has been a stop for flights carrying migrants, including one flight that DeSantis said contained a man claiming to be a teenager who later was accused of murder in Jacksonville. While there haven’t been any such flights reported in about six weeks, DeSantis — widely speculated as a potential 2024 Republican presidential candidate — has long made national border security a high-profile issue.
A $99.7 billion budget proposal he rolled out Thursday for the Legislature to consider included an $8 million line item to transport undocumented immigrants out of state. DeSantis also sent Florida law-enforcement officers and equipment to the Southern border for seven weeks in the summer at the request of Texas. The Miami Herald reported the state’s price tag for the deployment tops $1.6 million.
Sen. Annette Taddeo, a Miami Democrat running for governor next year, was among Democrats who quickly tied DeSantis’ proposals Friday to 2024 White House ambitions.
“Which of Florida’s borders, Alabama or Georgia?” Taddeo tweeted. “Ronnie is spending Floridians’ taxpayer dollars pandering to voters in Iowa.”
DeSantis announced his proposals hours after a Department of Children and Families emergency rule was published about agencies that provide services to unaccompanied children being resettled in Florida.
Larry Keefe, a former U.S. attorney who was named by DeSantis as the state’s “public safety czar,” blamed Biden administration policies for opening the border to criminal cartels smuggling migrants through Mexico from South America, Central America and other parts of the world.
“The Mexican criminal cartels have custody and total control over these migrants on this journey,” Keefe said Friday at the airport. “Many of them are what are called unaccompanied children. And they make this long dangerous journey without their families. Too many of these unaccompanied children suffer horribly on this journey, and some die. Too many are abused by the criminal cartels and smugglers. And way too many descend into criminal sex trafficking, labor trafficking and drug trafficking after they arrive in the United States. American kids are dying of drug overdoses in record breaking numbers from pills laced with fentanyl. More than 90% of this fentanyl that is killing our kids crossed the Mexican border.”
DeSantis’ proposals have not been filed in legislation for the 2022 session, which will start Jan. 11. But he was joined at the news conference by Sen. Aaron Bean, R-Fernandina Beach, Sen. Jennifer Bradley, R-Fleming Island, Rep. Cord Byrd, R-Neptune Beach, and Rep. Clay Yarborough, R-Jacksonville.
As part of his proposals, DeSantis wants to expand a 2020 state law that requires all government employers and some contractors to use a federal electronic system known as E-Verify to check the immigration status of new workers. DeSantis wants to add enforcement powers for the state Department of Economic Opportunity.
Also, DeSantis wants to expand a controversial 2019 law aimed at sanctuary cities by declaring a “sanctuary policy” for any local government that doesn’t assist state law-enforcement officers in investigations about people in Florida illegally.
A federal judge in September ruled that two parts of the 2019 sanctuary-cities law violated constitutional equal-protection rights. One of those parts of the law banned state and local agencies from having sanctuary policies that would prevent law-enforcement officials from cooperating with federal immigration-enforcement efforts. The other part required law-enforcement agencies to use “best efforts” to support enforcement of federal immigration laws.
The law was designed to spur local law-enforcement agencies to fully comply with federal immigration detainers and share information with federal immigration authorities after undocumented immigrants are in custody.
U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom, who is based in South Florida, delved extensively in the ruling into the Republican-dominated Legislature’s development of the law (SB 168) and pointed to what she described as an “immigrant threat narrative” that helped lead to it.
“Based on the evidence presented, the court finds that plaintiffs have proven by a preponderance of the evidence that SB 168 has discriminatory or disparate effects on racial and ethnic minorities, and these discriminatory effects were both foreseeable and known to the Legislature at the time of SB 168’s enactment,” she wrote.
In Florida, no cities or counties have sanctuary policies. Opponents have argued, in part, that the law will lead to increased detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants, including people stopped by police for minor offenses.
The state has appealed Bloom’s ruling to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where the case is pending.
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January 6th all roads lead to Nancy Pelosi.
Open borders which causes crime, disease, sex trafficking, child abuse, drug trafficking, voter fraud, worker exploitation, etc. all roads lead to dementia Joe.
Kamala Harris is at a dead end and doesn’t know which way to turn.
The Biden Administration’s National Security advisor was a major player in the Clinton Russian hoax.
The Biden Attorney General is selling CRT out the back door where his son-in-law is profiting millions.
The Attorney General attempted to illegally suppress parents rights who disagree with CRT.
Note to fake news, Bill Cotterell, and Jeffrey Schweers… News Flash… Trump won!
Honestly its about white leftist politicial radicals that run BLM and the media panicking because real Black Americans have had enough of their crap and are turning against the leftists and the Democratic Party in vast numbers. How else can we explain the panicked rush to bring in as many brown people over our boarders as quickly as possable? It is being done to replace the Black votes the Democratic Plantation Masters have had in their back pocket since emancipation.
Yeah the tide is turning against the leftists. Real Black Americans will stand with conservatives. Honestly the Brown people the leftists brought in over the boarder are escaping leftist governments to come here. They wont vote with the leftists for very long because they know that does not work in their home countries they are fleeing from.
If you don’t have a border, you don’t have a country. It should be very obvious at this point what their intent is. You are being replaced, bc the powers that be, would like very much to replace white people. How else can a black man run over people (all white) in a Christmas parade and kill them with hardly any press coverage? How else can a 5 year old (Cannon Hinnant, white) be shot point blank in the face, in front of his two sisters, by black man because he ran his bike onto his lawn and its not covered in the media. It is all about race, but if you’re white, you aren’t suppose to point it out because its “racist.”
Not too long ago the conservative “conventional wisdom” was that we must have a constitutional convention of the States to address the excesses of the left. That was dolittle RINO wisdom in comparison to what a comparatively few strong Governors can do to tamp down the out of control left.
The leadership our Governor is showing will inspire other Republican and moderate Democrat Governors across the fruited plains of our great nation to stand up to the never ending tyranny being imposed upon us by the Brandon administration.
Great leadership is the foundation, the bedrock, which will lift The USA out of our weakness which we are looked at with disdain by the other nations of the world thanks to the inept bumbling Brandon administration.
Best D@mn Governor Ever!!!
Send em packing! Let’s Go Brandon!!!
…while you’re at it, gather up all those Yankee Carpetbaggers that came here but refused to assimilate. Leave your liberal ways behind…we do not want it.
Breaking News!!
OSHA investigating Amazon warehouse collapse…
With all the failed Biden Administration problems their disingenuous focus is on January 6th … This disingenuous Kangaroo Court lacks transparency because they refuse to furnish the videos that will expose the truth…
On the local level the Tallahassee Mayor continues to misuse resources at the City of Tallahassee for his campaign ads; participates in the vendetta against Matlow…
Meanwhile Governor Ron DeSantis continues to be the Best Governor In America!
Republicans focus on Humanity; Democrats focus on their re-election campaigns…
The Obummer-BiteMe-Harass & Garland & Wray & Mayorkas “policies” appear to be anti-constitutional, and illegal.
Article 4 section 4 “shall protect each of them (states) against invasion”
Article 2 section 3 “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed”
Article 1 section 10, 2nd paragraph says states can inspect incoming people (e.g. for disease) & goods (some do for safety against agricultural pests, quality of dairy products, but I see no reason it couldn’t be used to block import or smuggling of federally or state interdicted drugs, explosives, execute arrest warrants including on deportees…), and charge fees just sufficient to cover the costs.
8 USC 1225, 1226, 1231, 1101; 42 USC 265, 268.
Impeach. Impeach. Impeach. Prosecute. Convict. Imprison… repeat as necessary.
Is anyone aware of a country, other than the United States, where a person can:
Cross their border illegally
Get free transportation to anywhere in that country
Get a food subsidy
Get a housing allowance
Get free education for their children
Get free family health care
Be issued a driver’s license
Vote illegally in the country’s elections
Openly protest and rally for or against political issues and perceived injustices
Be arrested numerous times and get released on bail paid by someone else
Get a job where you may be able to totally or partially avoid paying any taxes.
And, all this while not even being a legal citizen of that country. Try getting any of that from some other country, if they would even let you in. The message we are sending to the world is; “Offer them free stuff and they will come.”
What is wrong with your readers? If we are gonna start charging registered Democrats for perceived harms, I will assume the republicans are volunteering to cover the health care costs of all the people infected with covid, not to mention providing for the families of the literal tens of thousands of people that have died as a result of these terrible policies. What a joke.
It is not virtuous to invite all the peoples of the world into your country and to provide for all their needs. This false generosity comes at the expense of our own citizens. It is the equivalent of providing for strangers’ children at the cost of leaving your own children in want and need. Parents who would do this would not be loving; they would be hating their own children.
This country does not belong to the elites. They are not free to plunder it under the banner of compassion or any other false pretenses that they conjure up. We want OUR children educated (all of them not just 50%). We want OUR citizens employed. WE want to live in safety like the elites in this country do. The unelected President just built a wall around his private Delaware estate and Congress built a wall around the Capitol; we want a wall too. Congress funds the Capitol police, we want our police funded too (including ICE and Border Patrol). Their security is not told to stand down; we don’t want our security to stand down either. Enough is enough!
Snidely has it right. Best damn governor EVER!
If you are in the registered party that causes great harm to your fellow man then anyone registered in that party should be assessed fees to cover the devastation that decisions from that party and party leaders have caused.
Afghanistan, open borders illegal aliens. China bioweapon, gasoline prices, Big Tech interference, interrupted supply chain, inflation…
After they cover those costs they should pay for the pain and suffering…
They may want to consider remodeling Guantanamo because they’re all going to end up there soon under arrest… The entire Biden Administration, the Clintons, Zuckerberg, Fauci… for their crimes against humanity.
Notwithstanding my continued support for any action taken to hamper the anti-America dementia Joe Brandon Sadministration’s efforts to destroy our Republic… sadly, nothing will ever be done to remove the millions upon millions of disease carrying, criminal, drug mule, sex trafficking, fraudulent voting, illegal aliens already here.
Yes
I just love anyone who consistently knows how to effectively poke a sharp stick in the eye of the Brandon administration time and time again.
Best D@mn Governor ever!!!!!