In a compromise, GOP lawmakers are ending a two-week feud over a bill they passed last month that largely stripped DeSantis of his immigration enforcement powers.
Instead, lawmakers must meet in another special legislative session Tuesday to pass different bills that will create a new State Board of Immigration Enforcement made up of the governor, attorney general, chief financial officer and agriculture commissioner.
The new legislation also eliminates DeSantis' control over transporting migrants, according to a memo to legislators released by House Speaker Daniel Perez, Republican-Miami, and Senate President Ben Albritton, Republican-Wauchula. DeSantis used that power to fly migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, in 2022.
DeSantis called Perez and Albritton “great partners” in a statement Monday night.
“We have produced an aggressive bill that we can stand fully behind,” DeSantis said.
Perez and Albritton said in their memo that the three new bills make “only minor modifications” to what they passed two weeks ago.
Instead of making Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson the state’s top immigration enforcer, it would eliminate the position. The new state board will instead oversee $250 million in grants to local police to learn how to assist federal immigration officers.
It would also create new state-level crimes for immigrants who illegally enter and illegally reenter the state, according to legislative leaders.
And people who are in the country illegally would be automatically denied bail if they are arrested, a priority for DeSantis.
The agreement resolved an extraordinary standoff between DeSantis and the Republican-controlled Legislature over how best to carry out President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda.
After DeSantis called lawmakers back to Tallahassee for a special legislative session to carry out his own immigration ideas, Perez and Albritton rebuked him. They passed their own legislation they said was stronger but that gave immigration enforcement powers to Simpson, with whom DeSantis has a frosty relationship.
DeSantis launched an intense campaign online and on national television bashing Republican lawmakers who voted for the legislation.
Under the new deal, Simpson would be given about $46 million to hire 84 more officers “to enhance interdiction activities,” according to the joint statement. That includes building a new “interdiction station” along Interstate 10 in the Florida Panhandle.
Under the deal, DeSantis drops his idea to spend $350 million to fly migrants to other countries. Lawmakers previously questioned how DeSantis was carrying out the current program of flying migrants to other states.
Under the new bill, the state program would be replaced with a new one “where the transport of illegal aliens is done only at the direction of the federal government, with state taxpayer costs fully reimbursed,” Perez and Albritton wrote.
Lawmakers, who were already scheduled to be in Tallahassee for committee meetings, will convene at noon to take up the proposed bills.
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