Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will send more than 1,000 personnel from Florida, including 800 Florida National Guard members, to the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas. In addition to the National Guard members, DeSantis is sending 101 Florida Highway Patrol troopers, 200 Florida Department of Law Enforcement officers, 20 Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officers, 20 emergency management personnel, five aircraft, two mobile command vehicles, 17 drones and 10 boats.
DeSantis said in a statement that the move is needed to help Texas deal with an influx of immigrants and added that “the impacts of Biden’s Border Crisis are felt by communities across the nation, and the federal government’s abdication of duty undermines the sovereignty of our country and the rule of law. At my direction, state agencies including law enforcement and the Florida National Guard are being deployed to Texas, with assets including personnel, boats and planes. While Biden ignores the crisis he created, Florida stands ready to help Texas respond to this crisis.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sent a letter to 49 other state governors on Tuesday asking for assistance in dealing with the surge of migrants at his border due to the end of Title 42 — a COVID-19-era regulation allowing the federal government to immediately expel migrants. The COVID-19 pandemic emergency regulations ended earlier this month. Biden administration officials have said the initial influx after the end of Title 42 has subsided, but Abbott said in his letter: “with the end of Title 42 expulsions, President Biden’s own administration estimates that at least 150,000 migrants are waiting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border and enter our country illegally. The flood of illegal border activity invited by the Biden Administration flows directly across the southern border into Texas communities, but this crisis does not stop in our state. Emboldened Mexican drug cartels and other transnational criminal enterprises profit off this chaos, smuggling people and dangerous drugs like fentanyl into communities nationwide.”
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