Trump Administration: No Plans To Send Migrants to Florida
After pushback from state and local officials, U.S. Customs and Border Protection is no longer pursuing plans to send an influx of migrant families to Florida in the coming weeks.
Plans were revealed earlier in the week that would have seen several hundred migrant families originally apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border settled in the large Democratic counties of Broward and Palm Beach, Florida.
CBP officials now tell The Hill, however, that those plans will not be pursued “at this time.”
Instead, officials indicated that they will be flying and busing the migrants to San Diego, California, and other locations around the U.S. for processing and release, according to Reuters.
Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw released a statement on Twitter on Saturday, thanking state and local officials for their efforts and support in pushing back against the plan — which he said would have been a “crisis” for the community.
I want to thank our community for it’s unequivocal support regarding this immigration issue in Palm Beach County. pic.twitter.com/4uAeEqys0G
— Sheriff Ric Bradshaw (@RicBradshaw) May 18, 2019
“Because of everybody’s efforts, we are able to stop what had appeared to be a crisis for our community,” Bradshaw said in an audio file attached to the tweet. “We will continue to monitor this situation and if there are any changes we will let you know.”
“You need to know that we stand ready to protect you, keep you safe, and adjust to anything that is going to happen in this community that affects your quality of life,” he concluded.
Bradshaw also expressed gratitude toward the community, who had been quick to chafe against the plan earlier in the week.
The overwhelmingly negative response prompted CBP to issue a statement of their own, explaining the rationale behind their decision.
“The men and women of CBP are doing everything we can to achieve our humanitarian mission and will continue to coordinate with stakeholders in local communities, including other law enforcement agencies, elected officials, and non-governmental organizations, as DHS employs a ‘whole of government’ approach to confronting the ongoing crisis,” the agency wrote, explaining that only non-violent, family units would be released stateside.
But the state’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis remained unwilling to accept the decision. He felt the plan would be harmful to Florida regardless of illegal immigrants’ family or criminal statuses.
“We cannot accommodate in Florida just dumping unlawful migrants into our state,” Gov. DeSantis said, according to WPTV. “I think it’ll tax our resources, the schools, the health care, law enforcement, state agencies.
According to NBC, the governor — a strong supporter of President Donald Trump — proceeded to decry the administration’s plan as simply “not acceptable.”
After CBP relented, DeSantis defended Trump, saying that he did not believe the order — which he was never briefed on — had come directly from the president.
“I’m going to be addressing this,” DeSantis said. “This is not something that came down from the White House. This was something that came out of the agencies.”
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