NY Times: “DeSantis Pushes Toughest Immigration Crackdown in the Nation”
Positioning himself for a run for the Presidency, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has taken aggressive immigration enforcement moves, including transporting migrants to Marth’s Vineyard, that have been in the news (see, e.g., here, here, here). Expect that aggressiveness to continue.
ed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, . . . the Florida Legislature is considering a sweeping package of immigration measures that would represent the toughest crackdown on undocumented immigration by any state in more than a decade.
Expected to pass within weeks because Republicans have supermajorities in both chambers, the bills are part of what Mr. DeSantis describes as a response to President Biden’s `open borders agenda,’ . . . .
The bills would expose people to felony charges for sheltering, hiring and transporting undocumented immigrants; require hospitals to ask patients their immigration status and report to the state; invalidate out-of-state driver’s licenses issued to undocumented immigrants; and direct the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to provide assistance to federal authorities in enforcing the nation’s immigration laws.
Mr. DeSantis has separately proposed eliminating in-state college tuition for undocumented students and beneficiaries of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, who were brought to the United States as young children.” (bold added).
Sounds to me like much of the proposed Florida law would meet the same fate as Arizona’s S.B. 10760, which the Supreme Court found to the most part to be preempted by federal immigration law in Arizona v. United States (2012). Even so, expect Governor DeSantis to fully support the law’s passage and attempt to capitalize on public concerns with immigration (concerns that he has heightened with his rhetoric).
KJ