Florida’s Governor is again arguing that elections in “blue states” could be more fair, while suggesting a Donald Trump policy proposal may be part of the solution.
“I think his immigration policies to repatriate the illegals and close the border will also help because that’s going to make it less likely that those folks will be able to vote,” Ron DeSantis said Sunday on Fox News‘ “Sunday Morning Futures.”
Trump, as he did in 2016, is promising the biggest mass deportation effort in many decades.
“Following the Dwight Eisenhower model, we will carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” Trump said in the Spring, referencing the infamous “Operation Wetback” program that was a response to concerns under Eisenhower and predecessor Harry Truman that undocumented immigration depressed wages in the Southwest.
DeSantis himself made similar proposals for a “big program” during his failed presidential campaign.
“If you let people come illegally without a sanction, you’re going to continue to have this problem. The sanction is you get deported. So we’re going to do it,” DeSantis said last year during an appearance on The Blaze.
Running against Trump at the time, DeSantis expressed doubt the former President had the gumption to get it done though.
“I’m really the only candidate that you can trust to do it,” DeSantis added. “I mean, I know Donald Trump is promising it, but he said the same thing in 2016 and didn’t deliver on it. A lot of the other Republicans, as you rightfully point out, they’re uncomfortable even talking about doing that. But we’re never going to solve the problem unless we have the rule of law prevail.”
Yet even DeSantis has acknowledged the logistics may be a challenge.
During an interview in the same timeframe with an Iowa radio station, the 2024 presidential candidate ameliorated a previous promise to remove “everyone who has come in illegally under Biden” to “the last ones to come in under Biden are going to be the first ones out.
“Well, here’s the thing. So I don’t know how many are here,” DeSantis admitted.
“We’ve been told for many years, it was like 10, 11 million. But just under Biden, there’s been 6 or 7 million. You can’t say (that) because you’re not going to be able to do 100%, that then you should send none. I mean, I think that that’s a non-starter. You have to establish that there’s going to be a sanction. You have to enforce the law. Clearly, we have limited resources. You’re going to have to make choices as about how you do that.”
By January, though, he was promising to remove 8 million people.
The Governor’s tough talk on illegal immigrants has surfaced often.
Last September, DeSantis also claimed to be “entitled” if President to “send the military to the border and to use deadly force against the Mexican drug cartels” and leave them “stone cold dead,” though it was unclear how he would definitively identify cartel members before preemptive state executions.
“But when somebody’s got a backpack on and they’re breaking through the wall, you know, that’s hostile intent and you have every right to take action under those circumstances. And guess what, you do that a few times, the times are a-changin’, they will have to respond to that,” DeSantis said during a Sept. 12 2023 appearance on the CBS Evening News.
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