President Trump‘s administration is backing down from a plan to transfer illegal immigrants from the state of Texas to Florida after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis rejected the idea as “not acceptable.”
The administration called off the plans “at this time” to send immigrants to Florida’s Broward and Palm Beach counties from the U.S.-Mexico border, U.S. Customs and Border Protection told The Hill on Saturday.
On Thursday, Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw and Broward Mayor Mark Bogen had announced that two planeloads of illegal immigrants, who had attempted to cross illegally in El Paso, Texas, were expected to be flown to their counties with about 270 migrants arriving each week.
“I asked if there was an end date to this and they said no,” he said at the time.
On Saturday, after the halt to the plans, Bradshaw told WPTV, “Because of everybody’s efforts, we are able to stop what had appeared to be a crisis for our community.”
The Republican governor had also pushed back on the U.S. Border Patrol‘s move but appeared hopeful that the admin wouldn’t follow through, saying on Friday, “Nothing’s concrete. There’s been no migrants brought, released, in Florida,” as the Orlando Sentinel reported.
“We cannot accommodate in Florida just dumping unlawful migrants into our state,” DeSantis made it crystal clear that he opposed the idea. “I think it’ll tax our resources, schools and health care, law enforcement, state agencies.”
However, DeSantis blamed Congress for their inaction to cooperate in order to work out a solution to fix the southern border crisis.
“The disaster that we’re seeing at the border, that is a disaster created by the policies that were enacted by the Congress of the United States,” he said.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis laid down the bottom line on the idea of immigrants transported to his home state:
“Bottom line is it doesn’t matter. South Florida, Central Florida, northeast Florida. [In] Florida, we have a lot of fish to fry in our own state with our own citizens. … And to just be on the hook for things that really are a result of the Congress’ failure, the failed policy of the federal government, that is not acceptable.”
While there won’t be illegal immigrants transferred to the state Florida at the time, Border officials are flying hundreds of immigrants to San Diego from the Rio Grande Valley.
As previously reported, on May 2 the Florida lawmakers passed a bill to ban sanctuary-city policies in the state. DeSantis noted his support for it, tweeting, “We are a stronger state when we protect our residents, foster safe communities and respect the work of law enforcement.”
