A.G. Gancarski
Gov. Ron DeSantis keeps floating proposals to do more in the fight against illegal immigration.
Accompanied by local and federal officials in Miramar, he discussed Operation Tidal Wave, a 287(g) operation which has led to the arrest of 1,100 illegal immigrants in collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and local and state authorities.
Bolstered by that success, he says he wants to expand the state role beyond arrests and toward adjudication by using members of the National Guard as immigration Judges if the Donald Trump administration permits it.
“We’re ready, willing and able to take it to the next level. We have submitted plans to DHS to say if this is approved, we will go off to the races. And we will be able to do really from soup to nuts, from apprehension to detention, even putting some of our people in the National Guard in line to serve as immigration Judges to process this. We can do it,” DeSantis said.
“These are not Article 3 judges. They are executive branch employees, basically. We can absolutely deputize judge advocates from our National Guard units to serve as immigration judges,” he added.
The Governor dismissed “due process” concerns, saying there are “tens of thousands of illegal aliens in Florida at a minimum that have already been issued final orders of removal, and there’s hundreds of thousands of them throughout the United States of America.”
“So they’ve had a lot of process. They’ve been ordered to be removed,” DeSantis said. “They have not complied with those removal orders, and that’s a very, very high priority for our state efforts to continue to identify those individuals and make sure that they return to their country of origin.”
He rejected the idea that they need “some O.J. Simpson type trial before they can be deported,” saying President Trump has statutory and constitutional authority to remove people. DeSantis also dismissed a reporter’s concern that some are being removed even though they are American citizens, by pointing out criminal violations by illegal immigrants as showing “a lot of people have been harmed.”
“The notion that this is America, therefore, we should have an open border,” DeSantis said, is not “responsible” and is an example of a “fake” narrative.
DeSantis also is willing to expand detention if the feds call for it.
“If we get the sign-off from DHS, we can expand detention space very quickly in Florida. I mean, just think about it. I mean, you guys who are Florida based, you know when we have hurricanes, we end up setting up locations for tens of thousands of linemen, right? Do that very, very quickly. So we have the capacity to set it up quickly, but we’re not going to do that without the approval of the Department of Homeland Security.”
The Governor suggested during a Fox News interview Wednesday that state assets could be used for transportation to El Salvador, if the Trump administration gave that scheme a “greenlight.”
He repeated that offer Thursday, saying “we can even help on the transport piece. I know that they were talking about GITMO. I don’t know that they’ve used that, but we can help with that as well.”
There is no indication that’s imminent, but what’s clear is the Governor wants to be front and center in the illegal immigration fight, and he’s willing to use state resources to do whatever he can.
17 comments
Michael K
May 1, 2025 at 11:11 am
I believe the correct term is “kangaroo court.”
Foghorn Leghorn
May 1, 2025 at 11:14 am
Obama removed over 3 million. Where was the outrage then?
MH/Duuuval
May 1, 2025 at 7:23 pm
Obama targeted criminals, not children, and he didn’t deliberately separate families.
And what’s with Trump claiming he can, or won’t, or can’t just yet, bring back a person he sent to El Salvador on the basis of a photoshopped photo of “gang symbols”?
ScienceBLVR
May 1, 2025 at 11:21 am
The Governor suggested …… that state assets could be used for transportation to El Salvador, if the Trump administration gave that scheme a “greenlight.”
State Assets? Instead of what budget items? Maybe Lottery funds, sales taxes, property taxes? I hear Hope Florida has some extra bucks. Love to see if 60% of Floridians would agree- let’s put it up for a vote?
PeterH
May 1, 2025 at 12:19 pm
If implemented, you can expect this embarrassing decision to be appealed!
Foghorn Leghorn
May 1, 2025 at 12:27 pm
60% of voters to agree on shipping out illegals? Piece of cake.
PeterH
May 1, 2025 at 5:15 pm
No one in America objects to the deportation of undocumented immigrants but there constitution requires a review of each individual case before deportation.
The Trump administration forever has proceeded unconstitutionally and irrationally …. the courts must halt his actions whenever possible to give clarity to the process. In recent deportations Trump has sent Venezuela and other nation’s undocumented to El Salvador. Is this process legal. Shouldn’t the courts see the individual’s arrest records and make sure we’re locking up terror suspects and not others who perhaps have committed no crime? What is the Trump protocol for rounding up suspects? Have any Americans been deported to El Salvador.
WHY HASN’T CONGRESS WRITTEN STRONG CLEAR IMMIGRATION POLICY?
Michael K
May 1, 2025 at 8:56 pm
Trump’s overall approval rating is 39%. That means 60% disapprove. You have your numbers backward.
SuzyQ
May 1, 2025 at 4:40 pm
America’s Governor continues to excercise bold leadership. I for one am pleased his Yale (history) and Harvard (constitutional law) education with honors did not go to waste.
MH/Duuuval
May 1, 2025 at 7:27 pm
Dee’s view of history fits with MAGA exceptionalism. He posits the indigenous inhabitants of the New World did not have their land and resources stolen from them by Europeans and white Americans.
MH/Duuuval
May 1, 2025 at 9:38 pm
Here’s what I mean about Dee’s historical denialism, as well as that of Chris Rufo, his mento. They deny this happened:
“The conquest of the Americas was violent: torture, mutilations, massacres. Spanish conquistadores raped women, roasted babies using their swords as spits while their mothers watched, and fed the broiled corpses to dogs. In the 1500s, people in Hispaniola were so horrified by the cruelty of the Europeans that mothers killed their children in collective suicides. Then came the microbes: measles, smallpox, typhoid, cocoliztli.” (LA Review of Books,by Ieva Jusionyte, April 23, 2025)
Then, of course, white Europeans in the US and Canada came close to exterminating the indigenous population and, failing that, put then on reservations and took away their children to government schools.
Michael K
May 1, 2025 at 8:54 pm
The Unabomber also went to Harvard. What’s your point?
GoGRD
May 2, 2025 at 10:42 am
Go Ron also have them track down the criminal pilots dispersing toxic chemicals everyday into our airspace- another big fat mess given to us by the Feds
MH/Duuuval
May 1, 2025 at 7:52 pm
I would like to nominate lame-duck MAGA Jax city council member Rory Diamond to be the top NG immigration judge.
The Man and the Moment are met.
LexT
May 2, 2025 at 8:02 am
People are being idiots. Deportation means you can’t stay here, it doesn’t mean you’ll never come back. It also doesn’t mean that if the person has a legitimate road to return to the USA that they cannot appeal from the other country. Why would he pay for 20,000,000 trials for illegal aliens when none of them would be able to produce even a prima facia defense? If you had a defense, you would’ve come through the country the right way, or at a bare minimum, gone straight to a courthouse to declare for asylum. Anyone advocating for illegal ‘s’ rights is just doing it in bad faith because they think they personally get some advantage out of it, whether it be a cheap gardener or an eventual comrade in voting.
MH/Duuuval
May 2, 2025 at 6:16 pm
Asylum seekers are by definition on the run: From some form of repression, whether it’s cartels or the government. Time is of the essence for them.
May 11, 2025 at 7:59 am
sbpcfl
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