Florida House is right. End DeSantis’ slush fund

Florida used to consider immigration a federal responsibility — until Gov. Ron DeSantis ran for president.

His shameless exploitation of President Trump’s signature issue has cost Florida taxpayers at least $573 million since 2023. It’s long past time for the Legislature to pull the plug.

There’s no way to also quantify the immense toll of DeSantis’ political ambition on the thousands of people he’s imprisoned in often inhumane conditions, the shattering of families and the harm to employers — whose valued workers have vanished into the night.

The issue at the moment is the expiration of an emergency trust fund that DeSantis has used like a piggy bank to detain so many people.

The Legislature created the fund four years ago to speed the response to disasters such as hurricanes or COVID-19, not foreseeing how he would cynically define illegal immigration as a “disaster.” Ever since, the Joint Legislative Budget Commission has pumped unspent appropriations into the fund, despite a lack of appropriate controls.

To Florida’s three most critical industries — agriculture, tourism and construction — the true emergency is the loss of so many hard-working hands.

The trust fund expired Tuesday, Feb. 17. It should be renewed only with strong safeguards and oversight, which House leaders propose. Aside from how callously DeSantis has manipulated it, it is bad government to let anyone squander the public’s money so unaccountably.

Of the $573 million spent on immigration since 2023, the governor’s emergency management division said $405 million was in the past six months alone, with nearly half a million for private jet flights, mostly to and from his Everglades detention camp for migrants, with meals at 55 restaurants in and near Tallahassee.

Outside lawyers have been paid at least $1.7 million, and one eye-popping expense is $92 million for portable sanitary facilities paid to a St. Petersburg company, Doodie Calls.

The company’s lobbyist is Brian Ballard, an international influencer and DeSantis supporter who employed Pam Bondi before she became Trump’s puppet attorney general.

Florida’s Constitution sets a four-year limit on trust funds. Unless this one is renewed, DeSantis would have to shut down the entire gulag, including “Alligator Alcatraz,” the vast cage built almost overnight at an abandoned Everglades airstrip.

Pending legislation to renew the trust fund obviously didn’t meet Tuesday’s deadline — nor should it.

The Senate approved its version (SB 7040) by a largely partisan vote of 29-10, after defeating a Democratic amendment to restrict the spending to genuine disasters.

Instead of taking up that bill, the House Budget Committee offers its own. The bill (TED 26-02) would properly restrict spending from the fund to “a natural emergency.” DeSantis has shown the need for tight definitions.

The House bill also requires detailed quarterly reports to the Legislature of how money is spent from the fund, while forbidding purchases of aircraft, boats or motor vehicles.

That necessary restriction would apply retroactively, even if the bill is enacted later. The emergency fund would be one of many differences with the Senate to be settled in a conference committee on the overall budget.

The House’s proposed budget also adds $100 million to the fund, contingent on enacting the trust fund extension with its restrictions.

DeSantis has been promising that the Trump administration will reimburse Florida for at least some of the money but no money has come and there may never be any. While FEMA has approved a $608 million reimbursement, it has been held up by the Department of Justice for unspecified reasons. State coffers aren’t the only resources being drained by the feds: Enforcement has been crowding local jails with detainees, and Orange County says the DHS is paying a per-day rate that falls fall short of what it costs to hold suspected immigration violators.

DeSantis would not be the first person to learn the hard way that Trump doesn’t like to pay debts. The blank check would be wrong in any case, but with no reimbursement forthcoming, the House should stand fast behind the draft bill’s reasonable proposal for extending the trust fund.

It would compel DeSantis to ask the Legislature to appropriate money for the specific purpose of his immigration pens, which includes two older facilities as well as the mosquito-ridden one in the Everglades.

The Legislature should shut it all down. But lacking the will to do that, it should at least conduct oversight and attach restrictions, such as cracking down on his lavish no-bid contracts and allowing legislators unannounced visits to the immigration prisons on the same basis as at Florida’s regular prisons and jails.

There should also be no extension of any “emergency” without the Legislature’s approval. Enough is enough.

The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Executive Editor Roger Simmons, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant, Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney and editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman. Send letters to insight@orlandosentinel.com.