As the mainstream media hopes that Americans will forget that Biden’s border crisis exists, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis offered renewed criticism of the president’s horrific handling of the southern border.
DeSantis’ latest criticism of Biden’s putrid immigration policy came with a warning from law enforcement personnel that many of the migrants they have encountered, are headed for Florida.
DeSantis targeted Biden shortly after the governor returned from a trip to the southern border in support of his move to send Florida law enforcement resources to Texas to assist with the local response to the immigration crisis.
DeSantis said he was “surprised” by his discussions with state officers who were sent to the border.
“They’ve made over 2,000 apprehensions, over 100 felony arrests, and they say that almost 70% of everybody that they have interdicted said their ultimate destination was the state of Florida,”
DeSantis said at a press conference. “If you think that having a wide-open border, 1,000 miles, however far it was away doesn’t affect here, you’re wrong.”
Florida sent law enforcement officers to the border following a request for assistance from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey in June.
DeSantis argued the border crisis would “turn around very quickly” if Biden re-instituted Trump-era policies he reversed by executive order shortly after taking office.
He called for the reinstatement of the Migrant Protection Protocols, which required asylum seekers to remain in Mexico during their immigration proceedings.
“If you have a huge percentage that are going to try to come to Florida, and I think Biden is paying for tickets on buses and flying folks around, that’s going to have a huge impact on community services, on education, on health care, it’s going to affect taxpayers to a huge, huge extent. The policy there needs to change,” DeSantis said.
DeSantis is one of several prominent GOP lawmakers who have criticized the Biden administration’s response to the border crisis. Biden officials argue the president inherited a dysfunctional immigration system and reversed several Trump-era immigration policies that were cruel and inhumane.
Something even less discussed by the mainstream media is how the wide open borders are leading to an influx of deadly drugs such as fentanyl.
There were more than 188,000 migrant encounters in June alone, bringing the total number of migrant encounters in fiscal year 2021 to more than a million. Drugs like fentanyl have been seized in greater quantities, with a 12% increase in June and 78% more seizures in FY 2021 than all of FY2020.
DeSantis noted that his state is having a problem with methamphetamine, and said that 95% of it came from the border.
Texas has launched a number of efforts to stem the crisis, including putting down a $250 million down payment on a new wall construction project after the Biden administration abruptly ended the project in January.
Additionally, it has cleared out jails to hold more illegal immigrants and made efforts to arrest those coming in illegally. Abbott said Operation Lone Star had resulted in the apprehension of 50,000 illegal aliens, 2,000 criminal illegal immigrants, and disrupted 40 stash houses.
Author: Ben Zimmer
