‘Just not telling the truth’: Ben Albritton, Daniel Perez blast Ron DeSantis for ‘blatant lies’ about TRUMP Act

Things are getting uglier between Gov. Ron DeSantis and leaders in the Legislature.

Mere hours after DeSantis bashed an immigration bill state lawmakers swapped for legislation he supported, Senate President Ben Albritton and House Speaker Daniel Perez are firing back.

The gist: The Governor’s full of it.

On Monday, a House committee advanced the TRUMP Act, a wide-ranging and expensive measure designed to match President Donald Trump’s policies to crack down on illegal migration in Florida.

The 87-page measure would, among other things, designate Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson as the state’s Chief Immigration Officer, create an Office of State Immigration Enforcement, increase criminal penalties for certain crimes committed by immigrants who are illegally in Florida and create a grant program for local police to boost immigration enforcement while cooperating with federal agencies.

DeSantis downplayed the TRUMP Act’s potential efficacy in a video and social media posts, calling the measure a “bait-and-switch” for his preferred legislation and an “an insult” to Trump’s name.

Notably, he said the bill “fails to put an enforceable duty” on state and local police, meaning they won’t be obligated to help their federal counterparts, and “unconstitutionally removes authority to enforce the law from the Governor to a lower-level Cabinet agency,” referring to the Department of Agriculture.

He then compared tasking the Agriculture Department with immigration enforcement to “putting the fox in charge of the henhouse,” referring to migrant laborers on farmland. Doing that, he said, “ensures that enforcement never actually occurs.”

Wrong, wrong and wrong, Albritton and Perez said in a joint letter.

They called DeSantis’ assertion that Florida localities won’t be able to help federal efforts “a blatant lie.” The TRUMP Act, they said, expands existing state requirements for Sheriffs to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) identify and detain “criminal legal aliens.”

They added that DeSantis’ claim that the bill would usurp his law enforcement authority is “completely untrue, and the Governor knows that.”

Simpson “already has broad authority to act during emergencies and does in fact have a law enforcement division of 200 sworn law enforcement officers,” they said, adding that the bill does nothing to undermine the emergency powers DeSantis now has.

Albritton and Perez then denounced DeSantis’ fox-in-charge-of-the-henhouse comparison as “outrageous” and an insult to farmers.

The shade didn’t end there.

“The Legislature will not act in a disingenuous or dishonorable way by attacking anyone, especially our law enforcement,” Albritton and Perez said. “Unlike others, the Legislature is not interested in misleading or attacking Floridians, especially Florida law enforcement. Our number one goal is to work together with President Trump. Anyone that says anything otherwise is not reading the bill, not reading executive orders, or just not telling the truth.”

Albritton and Perez gaveled in for the Special Session the Governor called on Monday before immediately gaveling out, tossing a fleet of DeSantis-backed bills and replacing them with substitutes they said were more synergistic with Trump’s immigration agenda.

In a separate letter explaining the move, Perez said that while DeSantis had “some good ideas … many of his proposals are bureaucratic” and would duplicate existing federal agencies.

“We do not need to duplicate the functions of U.S. Immigration and Customs and create a mini-me version of ICE,” he wrote. “In addition, his proposals would hijack local law enforcement operations and at one point, he even proposed arresting local law enforcement officers.”

The start of this week’s Special Session started two weeks after Albritton and Perez pushed back on DeSantis’ call for it. The Governor hadn’t offered details, they said, and was demanding legislative action without yet knowing what the federal government was planning to do, since Trump had yet to take office.

“It is completely irresponsible to get out ahead of any announcements President Trump will make,” they said.

DeSantis said he was “shocked” by the response and that there had since been an effort to “silence members” of his administration “who are eager to share the ongoing hidden consequences of unmitigated illegal immigration with the public.”

Anyone expecting this to be the final word on the matter from either party is likely kidding themselves.