(Headline USA) Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis threatened to send President Joe Biden “the bill” for all of the migrant costs his state has had to pay as a result of the surge in illegal immigration along the southern border.
DeSantis declared a state of emergency this week following the recent arrival of migrants in the Florida Keys. He also issued an executive order activating the National Guard and other state resources “to protect Floridians from the dangerous impacts of the Biden Border Crisis.”
DeSantis cited a recent report that boats of migrants from Cuba landed in the Florida Keys and left their vessels on Floridians’ property, forcing them to pay to have the Cuban boat removed.
One Florida homeowner, Jack Bartkus, recalled how “about 20 people that rode on this boat from Cuba” landed in his yard. “[The government] took the people into custody [but] they didn’t do anything with the boat,” he said.
“They left it here and just discarded it,” Bartkus said. “So it became my problem.”
Florida is “filling in the gaps” where the Biden administration is failing, DeSantis argued.
“We’ve been very aggressive, really across the board, at mitigating the damage from Biden’s disastrous border policies, and part of it is just what they’re doing at the border, but part of it is the message that’s gone out to say, ‘The rules don’t matter. Just show up, and you’re fine.’ And you can’t run a country like that, and it’s caused a lot of problems,” he said.
DeSantis argued Biden should have to bear the financial costs of his open border policies.
“We are going to clear the vessels free of charge for those residents because it wasn’t their fault,” he said. “Maybe we’ll send the bill to Biden, we’ll see, but the reality is this is just not the way you run a country.”
