“Today, I called for a special session of the Florida legislature the week of January 27 to prepare Florida to lead on the Trump Administration’s deportation program,” DeSantis announced Monday, stating that his administration will “allocate resources and ensure state and local officials in Florida are supporting these efforts.”
“We have no time to waste. Florida must lead,” he said. “While we are in special session, we should also address key issues facing our state: ballot initiative integrity, disaster relief, and condominium regulations.”
Speaking from Florida’s Capitol, DeSantis said, “There also needs to be measures to hold people accountable who are violating our anti-sanctuary policies, and then Florida needs to make sure that we don’t have any lingering incentives for people to come into our state illegally.”
“So therefore I’m going to call the legislature into special session starting the week of January 27 we have the next president taking office January 20,” he said, anticipating executive orders to be “issued immediately after the swearing in and the inaugural address.”
“We’re going to have some time to process to make sure we’re doing what we need to do. but then we need to act and we need to act quickly,” he said, making it clear this is a mandate from the American people:
The American people spoke very clearly of all the issues out there, and there were a lot of very important issues. This issue of the border and illegal immigration was one of the top issues in the 2024 election, and has been one of the top issues that we’ve had in this country for many, many years. So it will require new legislation in Florida to ensure that the duties of both state and local officials are very clear, and that those duties require them to be assisting the federal government in this regard. Now the state, we’re going to do it, because I’m going to order that the state does it.
DeSantis said some of this will require funding, and he will be calling on the legislature to provide that as well. But, the governor said, that will “help with the overall public safety,” citing looters — many of whom were in the country illegally — who were arrested after the hurricanes in the Sunshine State:
Yes, enforcing immigration law, in and of itself, is important. If you think back to the hurricanes we just had, they had looters in Pinellas County. I think it was like 45 of them that were arrested over a period of time, and I think 40 of them were in this country illegally. And I’m just thinking to myself, how the hell is this happening here on the head of a natural disaster, you got people that come here without authorization, and they go out and try to loot the place. Give me a break.
Those people, DeSantis continued, must be sent back “immediately.” Ultimately, DeSantis said this will help “the overall situation, even apart from immigration.”
Further, DeSantis warned that he will use his executive authority to suspend officials who refuse to follow the deportation orders.
“Now, the accountability is significant, and those duties are clear in the law, I have the authority to suspend them from their office if they are neglecting their duties. That’s a that’s an authority that I have when it’s been appropriate in the past,” he said.
“We also need to make sure that we don’t have incentives for people to come illegally. We enacted E-Verify. People said that couldn’t happen. We really did, probably the strongest legislation in the country in 2023. So I think Florida has really done a great job with one lingering exception back in 2014,” he added.
WATCH the full presser below:
The announcement comes nearly one month after DeSantis celebrated Florida’s booming economy in light of critics who falsely asserted that his crackdown on illegal immigration would hurt the state’s economy. The crackdown included the Florida legislature passing a bill requiring mandatory E-Verify rules on hiring, as well as a rule suspending business licenses for companies that hire illegal migrants.
“FL’s best-in-the-nation legislation combatting illegal immigration generated the typical array of false media narratives,” DeSantis said in December.
“That such narratives blew up shows that good policy pays dividends. The goal needs to be disfavoring illegal immigration rather than — as is common across the US — incentivizing more illegal immigration,” he added.
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