SARASOTA, Fla. – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis held a roundtable Thursday morning at New College of Florida to discuss immigration enforcement.
DeSantis was joined by New College of Florida President Richard Corcoran, AFPI Center for Homeland Security & Immigration VP Chad Wolf and Tom Homan, President Donald Trump’s border czar.
The governor used much of his time to emphasize the need for state and local cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Over the last two months, he’s set about signing a series of agreements with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to see local and state-level law enforcement trained and approved by ICE to perform immigration enforcement duties via the federal agency’s 287(g) Program. FHP is just one of several Florida agencies that the governor says are now able to ask anyone about their citizenship status solely on suspicion.
“We’ve been focused on this since I first became governor,” DeSantis said, highlighting Florida’s early efforts to ban sanctuary cities and implement employment verification measures as among the many initiatives leading up to his championing of President Trump’s mass deportation efforts.
Homan praised the Trump administration’s efforts to secure the border, claiming there’s been a 96% decline in illegal border crossing during Trump’s latest term.
“Every criminal alien that we remove from this country makes this country safer, every single one,” Homan said. “We’re going to do it one at a time and we’re gonna make this country safer at the end of this four years, guaranteed.”
Watch the roundtable again in the video player below or by clicking here.
