Ron DeSantis wants to be president so badly he can taste it, and that means he has to put immigrant-bashing first, Florida second. It doesn’t matter if the migrants he’s attacking are kids. Ron is still gonna bash them, and has, last year issuing an “emergency” executive order blocking the license renewals of federally funded facilities where asylum-seeking children are held until they can be reunited with a sponsor.
More recently, Mr. Refuses-To-Condemn-Nazis has been touting a series of local law enforcement actions from June that he claims “were able to recover these illegal aliens and enough fentanyl to kill off 2,000 people in the state of Florida,” Miami Herald reported. The action may have resulted in the seizure of the drugs, but implying that migrants had anything to do with the drugs is complete bullshit.
“What DeSantis did not mention is that the vast majority of the 22 arrests were not related to immigration but rather tied to men and women who live in the country legally,” the report said.
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“DeSantis also implied that undocumented migrants had been arrested on drug-related crimes, when none were, according to arrest records provided by the Florida Highway Patrol and two of the four sheriff’s offices that participated in the state’s effort,” Miami Herald continued. The arrests of seven undocumented immigrants stemmed from traffic violations, including driving too slowly. Floridians must feel safer already.
In an absolute shock to no one, DeSantis failed to obsess over the arrests of the actual people caught with fentanyl, and that’s simply because they weren’t undocumented immigrants. Miami Herald reported that DeSantis “emphasized” details about one migrant who, like many other migrants, had paid a smuggler thousands of dollars to help him enter the country without permission. Okay. But DeSantis did not similarly emphasize details about the drug-related arrests, including one person who was wanted on domestic battery charges. Ron DeSantis has an agenda, and he’s sticking to it.
Last month, we noted how Republicans were likely to ignore Customs and Border Protection data showing it’s overwhelmingly U.S. citizens who have been caught with drugs at the southern border.“Out of the 42 incidents in which a person's nationality was reported, 33 (79%) involved US citizens. Just 3 incidents involved a smuggler without legal status,” American Immigration Council Policy Director Aaron Reichlin-Melnick shared in a Twitter thread. “Only TWO publicly-reported seizures were linked to people crossing between ports of entry,” he wrote in another tweet.
“The data is of course incomplete, because CBP doesn’t publish details on every single seizure,” he continued. “But it does back up what the less detailed but more complete monthly statistics show; there is no measurable link between migrants and fentanyl smuggling.” That certainly isn’t stopping Ron DeSantis anyway, who has been just as quiet about the neo-Nazis who paraded around Tampa in his support earlier this month.
“It has been two days now with not a word from him about this incident or the fact that these Nazis were holding signs in support of him,” activist and journalist Thomas Kennedy wrote at Latino Rebels on July 26. “I have tried reaching out to his communications team and his chief propagandist, otherwise known as his press secretary, Christina Pushaw, for comment, but only received radio silence.” Pushaw earlier this year attacked the local archbishop in defending DeSantis’ anti-child executive order. She’s also been instrumental in re-popularizing the “groomer” slur against LGBTQ people.
Kennedy, who has been repeatedly censored by the thin-skinned governor, said “[t]his isn’t the first time that DeSantis has failed to condemn Nazi demonstrations in Florida. Back in February, Nazis terrorized the otherwise friendly and liberal city of Orlando by staging violent rallies and displaying hateful messages on banners hung from an overpass.” Pushaw lied that they were really Democratic operatives. “DeSantis had already failed to clearly condemn Nazi demonstrators in the past,” Kennedy wrote. “Unfortunately, he got a second opportunity—and he failed again.”
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