Appearing on Fox News this Saturday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis laid out his vision for how to handle the ongoing border crisis.
Specifically appearing on Fox News’ “Life, Liberty & Levin,” he offered up a wide range of solutions, including even a border wall funded by remittance fees.
The exchange began with host Mark Levin asking the governor to lay out his border plan.
“Well, we banned sanctuary cities,” DeSantis replied. “We have programs to take no benefits, like E-Verify. We have a human smuggling task force, and we’ve increased penalties for human smuggling. I have sent troops and I’ve sent law enforcement personnel to Texas to help at the border.”
“And then we have a program to transport illegal aliens to sanctuary jurisdictions, and we did that to places like Martha’s Vineyard. We’re also a maritime state, so we’ve interdicted boats. We’ve helped the Coast Guard from places like Haiti and deported people back to Haiti. So we’ve leaned in big time,” he added.
“Every community is a border community now with the fentanyl and all the rest. Here’s the thing. As president, this will be a day one issue to me. We’re going to declare a national emergency. I’m going to mobilize all resources, including the military. We’re going to put it at the southern border. We’re going to stop the invasion,” he continued.
Turning specifically to policies, he then called for reinstituting the Remain in Mexico policy that was created by the Trump administration but then later revoked by the Biden administration.
Trump vows to ‘terminate every open borders policy’ on day one, mass deport illegals https://t.co/dR2qNyubVn via @BIZPACReview
— BPR based (@DumpstrFireNews) January 4, 2024
He also spoke about funding a border wall.
“We will build a border wall, and we’ll finance that by charging fees on remittances that workers send to foreign countries,” he said. “That’ll raise billions of dollars.”
Many legal and illegal aliens alike who work in the United States send money back home to their families in foreign countries. This act of moving money from the U.S. to a family in Mexico, as an example, is called a remittance, and what DeSantis proposed was taxing these remittances.
DeSantis continued laying out his vision by turning to deportations.
“We have to deport people who are here illegally, and we haven’t seen that in many administrations in nearly adequate levels,” he said. “So we’re going to do that. And then once people know that the law’s going to be enforced, they’re much less likely to try to come illegally.”
“And then finally, I’m going to treat the Mexican drug cartels as akin to foreign terrorist organizations. They’re invading this country, and they’re putting this poison of fentanyl into all of our communities and killing tens of thousands of people every single year,” he concluded.
Keep in mind that former President Donald Trump, the lead candidate in the 2024 GOP presidential primary, promised many of the same things prior to winning the 2016 presidential election. And at first, it looked like he really meant it.
For example, in March of 2017, Rep Mike Rogers introduced a bill, the Border Wall Funding Act of 2017, that would have imposed a two percent tax on all remittances to Latin America. Yet for some reason, the bill never made it into law.
Trump could have levied taxes on remittances and used the money to build the Wall.
He chickened out.
— Martin Knight م (@_MartinKnight) January 10, 2024
DeSantis has for his part vowed to do what Trump could not.
“When he’s saying that he couldn’t get the job done, look, I wanted to send the message: I will get the job done. I’m not going to make excuses,” he said during an October interview with NewsNation.
Listen:
In fairness, Trump faced many legal challenges due to leftists filing lawsuits against his every move, particularly his every border-related move.
In DeSantis’ case, he does have an advantage: He convened a statewide grand jury that ruled in November that a “modest” fee should be imposed on all remittances.
“The grand jury claims that such a fee — which would likely require a supermajority vote in the Legislature to be approved — could generate tens of millions that could pay for beefed up enforcement, education, or money to help state agencies deal with unaccompanied migrant children,” Politico reported in November.
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V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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