Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Thursday his office has tools including suspending officials from office to compel local governments to cooperate with federal immigration authorities in assisting in detentions and deportations.
The governor's remarks came just two days after Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier warned city officials in Fort Myers that their failure to approve an immigration agreement with federal authorities could have serious consequences.
“If these local governments are not being part of the solution, we’ve got a lot of tools, including suspension from office, that we can do now,” DeSantis said at a forum on immigration at New College in Sarasota with the Trump administration's border czar, Tom Homan. “We’ve been doing a lot in Florida, but you’re going to see a lot more that’s going to happen over the weeks and months.”
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The Fort Myers City Council on Monday failed to approve an agreement that would have allowed the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to train local law officers to interrogate immigrants in their custody and detain them for potential deportation. Several council members expressed concern that it would lead to racial profiling and harm the community.
Advocates for immigrants say the agreements put local law officers on immigration enforcement.
On Tuesday, Uthmeier sent a letter to the city saying Fort Myers could be violating state law prohibiting “sanctuary cities,” a name often given to municipalities which limit cooperation with immigration enforcement.
“Sanctuary policies are not tolerated or lawful in Florida,” Uthmeier wrote. “Immediate corrective action is required.”
A public information officer for the city did not immediately respond to an email inquiry Thursday.
DeSantis has a history of removing local officials with whom he has disagreed with, in moves critics say are politically motivated. Earlier this decade, the GOP governor removed Monique Worrell, the Democratic state prosecutor for the Orlando area, saying she had failed to prosecute crimes committed by minors and didn’t seek mandatory minimum sentences for gun crime. Worrell, who disputed that claim, was voted back into office last year.
Another Democratic state prosecutor, Andrew Warren, whose district covered the Tampa area, also was removed by DeSantis over his signing of pledges that he would not pursue criminal charges against seekers or providers of abortion or gender transition treatments as well as his policies on not bringing charges for certain low-level crimes. Warren lost a bid last year to return to office.
Last month, DeSantis announced that several Florida law enforcement agencies had struck an agreement with ICE to interrogate, arrest and detain immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally and deliver them to federal authorities.
