‘Not good at this.’ Why lawmakers say they want to strip DeSantis’ immigration powers

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ call for a special legislative session to address illegal immigration has exposed a long-simmering feud with his Republican colleagues in the Legislature.

It has also exposed what legislators say are the shortcomings and lack of transparency of two of his key immigration initiatives.

Over the last two days, Republican lawmakers have cited the performance of his migrant relocation program and E-Verify to justify stripping him of nearly all of his immigration enforcement powers and giving them to the state’s agriculture commissioner.

State lawmakers in 2022 gave DeSantis $12 million to transport migrants from Florida to other states, which he used later that year to fly about 50 migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard.

The decision generated a blitz of headlines and outrage. He did one other flight, from Texas to Sacramento, California, in 2023. But since then, it’s not clear what DeSantis has done with the money. As of March last year, $9.4 million of it was unspent.

Top Republican lawmakers this week said they didn’t know how many migrants, if any, were ever transported from Florida to other states.

“That’s why we should have accountability,” said Sen. Joe Gruters, R-Sarasota. “That’s why having a single person, a single office and having a laser focus is going to help everybody.”

Under the legislation passed Tuesday night, the program would be given to Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson, who would study the effectiveness of the program and decide whether it should continue, Gruters said.

The governor’s office did not respond to questions on Tuesday about how many migrants it has relocated from Florida. The program is still active and run by a private company whose operations have remained secretive. The contractor, for example, operates under a fictitious name.

The performance of the program was cited by Republicans in rejecting DeSantis’ request this week for $350 million to expand the program to fly migrants to other countries.

“I don’t think that the proposal we saw originally in the governor’s proposed ideas made a lot of sense, quite frankly,” Rep. Lawrence McClure, R-Dover, told lawmakers Tuesday.

Lawmakers also cited the performance of DeSantis’ handling of E-Verify, a federal program that checks the legal eligibility of new workers.

DeSantis signed legislation in 2023 requiring all large employers to screen their employees through the program, part of a series of immigration laws that he touted as the “strongest” in the nation.

Since then, his administration has yet to cite a single employer for violating it.

Gruters told lawmakers that the state has issued eight letters to companies for not complying with the E-Verify requirements. All of those letters were issued in 2022, according to the website of the Florida Department of Commerce, which reports to DeSantis.

“Eight letters since 2022. Why hasn’t it been more?” Gruters said.

Department of Commerce spokesperson Emily Hetherington said Tuesday that it was “actively conducting more than one hundred investigations,” which “take time.”

The bill lawmakers passed Tuesday would put the program under Simpson and add 17 people devoted to E-Verify audits.

“We don’t have clarity out of the Department of Commerce or FDLE (Florida Department of Law Enforcement),” McClure said. “There’s not a lot of data there, which is concerning.”

Sen. Jason Pizzo, D-Miami, noted Tuesday that DeSantis didn’t hold accountable a state road contractor after one of its employees, a Honduran immigrant in the country illegally, killed Pinellas Sheriff’s Deputy Michael Hartwick at a construction site.

The state’s review of the incident was two pages, the Tampa Bay Times found. Police had also reported the company to federal immigration officials a year earlier.

“The bottom line is, the governor is not good at this,” Pizzo said.

Sen. Randy Fine, R-Melbourne Beach, who has accused DeSantis of “flailing” in his final two years in office, said taking this off DeSantis’ plate makes sense.

“I would say the governor has more to do than Wilton Simpson does,” Fine said. “He’s got a state to run.”

Herald/Times Tallahassee bureau reporters Ana Ceballos and Romy Ellenbogen contributed to this report.