Gov. Ron DeSantis is looking for federal and international cooperation for his rescue flights from Haiti.
“Part of the thing that’s going to help us is to be able to launch some flights out of the Dominican Republic,” DeSantis said in his latest appearance on “Fox & Friends.”
“So we’re trying to work with the State Department. We’re trying to work with the DR to say, ‘Hey, if we helicopter people over, can we then fly out of there?’ Because I think the airport situation in Haiti is just something that is not necessarily optimal and we want to make sure we can get as many people out as possible.”
The Governor likened getting help from federal agencies for the state’s international mission to “pulling teeth,” a phrasing that may not be persuasive to the Joe Biden administration, whose State Department has its own protocol to bring back people from war-torn areas, which includes billing people for the cost of the flight.
It should be noted that there has been a long-standing travel warning advising people shouldn’t go to Haiti “due to kidnapping, crime, civil unrest, and poor health care infrastructure,” so Florida’s flights are for people who already disregarded the advice of the federal government.
The first flight from Haiti arrived in Sanford Wednesday evening, with 14 total travelers, including some children, back on U.S. soil at 6:25 p.m. DeSantis noted on Wednesday that people being picked up will be on the taxpayers’ dime, so that evacuees won’t be “stuck with the bill.”
He said during a previous Fox News interview that “Christian missionary groups” would be rescued at the expense of Florida taxpayers.
Costs for this operation are undisclosed. These can add up: The Israel flights cost $19 million, as the Tallahassee Democrat reported.
Florida’s “customer-service” approach to returning evacuees includes what the Director of Emergency Management calls “door to door” service. With more than 500 people signed up for Air DeSantis routes in the coming days, it will be interesting to see if the Haiti operation costs less or more than the one in Israel last fall.
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