Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis this week wrote to the Biden administration, asking it to stop resettling illegal immigrants in the state of Florida — and to either deport them instead, or send them to a state that supports the “flouting of our immigration laws.”
DeSantis wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, objecting to what he sees as a lack of action by the administration in enforcing immigration law or to “protect Floridians from the continued release of dangerous criminal aliens.”
“While Floridians are working to ensure that criminal aliens are not released back into our communities, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) appears to be hard at work resettling ever larger numbers of illegal aliens who have no lawful status under federal immigration law from the southwest border to Florida,” he said in the letter.
More than 212,000 migrants were encountered at the border in July. While about 95,000, mostly single adults, were removed via Title 42 public health protections, the Biden administration is not removing unaccompanied children or some migrant families under the Trump-era order.
Along with the Biden administration’s dismantling of the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) it means many migrants are being processed and released into the U.S. with notices to appear at a court or an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office, and often travel to where they may already have relatives as their hearings progress.
The Florida governor cited Border Patrol statistics that 59,691 immigrants were issued either a notice to appear in court or an order of recognizance in July alone, and that as of June, 6,254 unaccompanied children had been released to sponsors in Florida this fiscal year.
DeSantis, one of a number of Republican governors who has objected to the Biden administration’s immigration policies and has blamed them for fueling the surge at the border, told Mayorkas not to resettle migrants in the Sunshine State.
“I ask that DHS immediately cease any further resettlement of illegal aliens in Florida and that the aliens instead be removed from the United States or resettled in states that support the administration’s continued flouting of our immigration laws,” he said.
“Floridians welcome responsible immigration that serves the interests of Florida and the American people, but we cannot abide the lawlessness that your department is aiding and abetting on the southwest border,” he wrote.
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