State and local officials have made nearly 20,000 immigration-related arrests over the past several months. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s according to Governor Ron DeSantis, who provided an update on the state\u2019s immigration enforcement efforts outside of Deportation Depot in Baker County Monday morning. <\/p>\n
DeSantis said the state\u2019s Operation Tidal Wave has yielded roughly 10,000 immigration-related arrests since last April, and when combined with local efforts, the number doubles to nearly 20,000 arrests.<\/p>\n
FHP alone has accounted for more than 7,000 immigration-related arrests.<\/p>\n
There have also been nearly 1,000 self deportations through the state\u2019s self deportation program.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, those are really, really big numbers and there\u2019s not another state in the country that is even close in terms of this level of participation,\u201d DeSantis said.<\/p>\n
The Governor claimed of the 10,000 arrests through the state\u2019s operation, roughly 63 percent of the individuals had criminal histories.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd it\u2019s various crimes. You do have some violent, you have DUIs, you have gang, you have sex offense, some are fugitives from justice,\u201d DeSantis said.<\/p>\n
State Representative Angie Nixon (D-Jacksonville) noted that means nearly 4,000 people arrested by the state had no prior criminal record.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reality of it is a lot of folks that have been taken up and disappeared from our communities are our neighbors. They\u2019re small business owners like the one that was operating a cafe shop on Main Street. They work in construction, they work in hospitality, they work in agriculture, and they\u2019re helping contribute to our society,\u201d said Nixon.<\/p>\n
The Governor argued the state\u2019s efforts are focused on illegal immigration overall, and not only on those who have come here and committed an additional crime.<\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cTo say that would be the case would be absurd. You\u2019re giving people license to come into the country illegally until you commit a serious crime? No. We want to prevent the serious crimes from happening,\u201d DeSantis said.<\/p>\n The Governor explained at Deportation Depot, the facility has directly contributed to 93 deportation flights involving nearly 3,000 detainees within the last four months alone.<\/p>\n \u201cOur goal is we want people here as little as possible. The goal is not to create a long-term facility, and that\u2019s not the function,\u201d DeSantis said.<\/p>\n Since the beginning, the Governor has argued Deportation Depot and its Everglades-based counterpart, Alligator Alcatraz, only serve a temporary mission.<\/p>\n But when we asked how long he believes they\u2019ll be necessary, the Governor indicated the ball is in the federal government\u2019s court, and contingent on DHS expanding its own bed capacity in the state.<\/p>\n \u201cIf they have what they need, then we won\u2019t have to do, but it\u2019s clearly temporary. How temporary will depend on the pace that they have interns of doing the expansion,\u201d DeSantis said.<\/p>\n But Nixon argued there doesn\u2019t seem to be an off-ramp.<\/p>\n \u201cWe knew that there was never an end in sight with these facilities that he stood up,\u201d Nixon said.<\/p>\n She argued the entire operation is a quote \u201cgrift\u201d, noting many of the companies operating the facilities were awarded no-bid contracts and have histories of donations to the Governor and other Republicans\u2019 campaigns.<\/p>\n But she noted whoever is elected Governor next could put an end to the state-run detention centers.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd so I hope that we start electing people who care about people and not care about enriching their friends,\u201d said Nixon.<\/p>\n The Governor said there are plans in the works for two additional detention centers, one in the Panhandle and another in Southwest Florida. <\/p>\n He said both are currently awaiting DHS approval.<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/a>] <\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here<\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here<\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/p>\n Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"State and local officials have made nearly 20,000 immigration-related arrests over the past several months. That\u2019s according to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":107217,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[982,5228,35434,45946,7840,54994,44843,28,6281,969,116,118,117,971,54990,10417,54991,634,17345,54992,13721,54989,914,7842,54993,29885],"class_list":["post-107216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-action_news","tag-action_news_jacks","tag-angie_nixon","tag-baker_county","tag-ben_becker","tag-columbia_county","tag-democratic","tag-florida","tag-governor","tag-jack","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-jake","tag-jake_snowfan","tag-jake_stowan","tag-lake_city_gateway_airport","tag-local","tag-operation","tag-operation_tidal_wave","tag-ron_desantis","tag-ron_desanttos","tag-state","tag-tanika_hughes","tag-tidal","tag-wave"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}