TALLAHASSEE – Gov. Ron DeSantis has spent at least $15.2 million in the first half of the year to tackle “illegal immigration,” drawing on a $500 million state fund that was put on the its availability for emergency use, according to the records.
The cost of DeSantis’ immigration efforts is not fully known, but records obtained by the Times/Herald provide a snapshot of how the Republican governor has been using state resources this year to respond to an issue that has been central to the his presidential campaign.
Since January, DeSantis has spent $4.5 million to support the Florida National Guard’s response to the state of emergency that DeSantis declared in Florida “due to the mass migration of unauthorized aliens ” and $10.7 million to respond to a separate state of emergency he declared in 2021. to “protect Floridians from the dangerous impacts of the Biden border crisis.”
Documents showing the expenditures do not provide many details about what the money was spent on, except to say that the state funds were used to support the Florida National Guard.
In a statement Thursday, the Florida Division of Emergency Management, which oversees those efforts, said state funds covered the cost of sending members of the Florida National Guard to the southern Texas border and personnel to the Keys of Florida to respond to the state’s “own situation.” mass migration”.
The expenses include the cost of having pilots, ground crew and equipment to monitor migrants who fled Cuba and Haiti and landed in the Keys. The response came after DeSantis declared a state of emergency in January and issued an executive order that activated the Florida National Guard and other state agencies to help patrol offshore.
DeSantis extended the executive order for another 60 days on June 30.
On June 14, DeSantis spent $3.3 million to support the Florida National Guard and “cover the costs of up to 650 personnel deployed to the southwest Texas border through June 10, 2023 “, according to the documents showing that this expenditure was authorized.
Florida personnel were sent to the southern border after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott asked for help from other states to help support border security efforts in his state. The request was made in May under the Emergency Management Assistance Compact, a mutual aid partnership among all states.
Generally, the aid-sending state is reimbursed by the aid-requesting state. At least this is the case described on the Emergency Management Assistance Pact website. But Abbott made clear in his request that Texas was asking states for help to “absorb the costs associated with this mission in support of the entire country,” records show.
Florida required. The state sent members of the Florida National Guard to support Texas’ Operation Lone Star in May for two weeks at the site, then sent a “second wave of troops totaling coverage of Florida to 30 days until the next state of support returns,” Amelia Johnson, a spokeswoman for the state Division of Emergency Management, said in a statement.
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“Florida was one of nine states whose National Guard responded to the call to provide resources and personnel to combat the crisis on the southern border,” Johnson said.
Emergency dollars spent on immigration issues
Records show the money invested was part of a $500 million “Emergency Preparedness and Response Fund” that the Florida Legislature approved last year to give the governor direct access to cash when declaring emergencies . DeSantis had initially asked for $1 billion.
When state lawmakers were considering establishing the fund, the DeSantis administration largely talked about the need in the context of storm recovery, including road repairs, debris removal and other unexpected costs related to disasters.
Republican legislative leaders who supported the proposal said the $500 million would put “rails” on the governor’s spending, arguing that without it the governor had no spending ceiling when it came to emergencies.
Critics, however, argued that the governor did not need half a billion dollars to use with little oversight.
The cost of DeSantis’ immigration plans
The DeSantis administration has defended the use of state resources on the southern border, arguing that Florida is willing to mitigate the impact of the federal government’s “failed” immigration policies.
In addition to the millions spent this year, records show DeSantis also spent at least $1.6 million to send law enforcement officers to the US-Mexico border in Texas in the summer of 2021.
At the time, the governor’s office argued that Florida taxpayers were “facing a huge bill for Democrats’ destructive open border agenda” that was more than the cost of sending state resources to the Texas border .
The seven-week trip, led by three state agencies, was seen by the Republican governor as a necessary step to bolster border security amid failings by the Biden administration, while critics saw the effort as a political assignment funded by the state. more DeSantis’ national footprint ahead of a possible 2024 White House bid.
DeSantis has also spent millions of dollars to fund a program that sent migrants from Texas to Democratic strongholds such as California and Martha’s Vineyard, an island in Massachusetts.
