TALLAHASSEE, Florida \u2014 Florida has spent nearly $600 million on immigration enforcement activities ordered by Gov. Ron DeSantis in the past three years, as well as nearly $150 million on missions to help Americans who were stranded in Israel and Haiti, according to a new report.<\/p>\n
The spending totals were included in the report Florida\u2019s Division of Emergency Management turned over to the Legislature on Saturday \u2014 roughly two weeks past the deadline required under a new state law \u2014 and represents one of the few times the DeSantis administration has provided detailed funding figures on efforts put in motion by the governor.<\/p>\n
DeSantis has used his emergency powers to embark on efforts that go beyond responding to natural disasters. He declared a state of emergency on immigration back in early 2023 \u2014 one that remains in place and has been repeatedly renewed. The governor and his administration have relied on these emergency powers to establish immigration detention centers in the Everglades and in northeast Florida.<\/p>\n
During these declared emergencies, Florida does not have to follow normal procurement rules.<\/p>\n
The DEM report shows that $573 million has been spent on \u201cOperation Vigilant Sentry,\u201d including more than $484 million on \u201cprojects\u201d related to the effort. It does not, however, give any detailed information on contracts and instead only lists $29 million of inventory that has been purchased, with items including radios, helicopter engines, vans and trailers.<\/p>\n
Although the state is expected to be reimbursed for its immigration work by the federal government, the report indicates that it has yet to receive any of the more than $600 million promised to Florida.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the Division of Emergency Management did not respond to questions about the report.<\/p>\n
DeSantis has repeatedly slammed the media for raising questions about whether the state was going to get reimbursed for Alligator Alcatraz, which the report calls the \u201cSouth Florida Detention Facility.\u201d The decision to repurpose an air landing strip as a means to detain people has created waves of controversy and legal challenges.<\/p>\n
The 15-page report includes short summaries of various activities \u2014 ranging from work done on various storms, including powerful hurricanes such as Hurricane Ian \u2014 as well as times the state\u2019s emergency operations center was activated. The EOC, for example, was activated during the \u201cNo Kings Day\u201d protests that occurred around the state in June 2025.<\/p>\n
The report includes a spreadsheet that totals $6.54 billion and breaks out the amount spent on individual emergency declarations. Some of the largest amounts were associated with storms such as Ian.<\/p>\n
But the report also states that efforts to help people evacuate from Israel following the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks and again in June 2025 cost nearly $95 million. The state wound up flying more than 700 Americans from Israel to Florida and spent more than $44 million on humanitarian help for those in Haiti.<\/p>\n
State Sen. Nick DiCeglie, the sponsor of the bill that required the report, said he was still \u201ccombing\u201d through the details of what the administration provided but stressed that the goal behind the report was to provide a \u201clittle more transparency\u201d about Florida\u2019s spending on emergencies.<\/p>\n
One state senator \u2014 Sen. Jason Pizzo, an independent from South Florida \u2014 used an expletive in a text when told the amount that has been spent on the immigration enforcement operations. Senate Democratic Leader Lori Berman simply said, \u201cWow,\u201d when asked about the $573 million spent.<\/p>\n
The timing of the report comes just a couple of days before a Senate panel is scheduled to take up a bill that would keep intact the trust fund created at DeSantis\u2019 urging so he could more easily to tap into money needed for emergencies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TALLAHASSEE, Florida \u2014 Florida has spent nearly $600 million on immigration enforcement activities ordered by Gov. Ron DeSantis…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":143428,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[40712,28,1841,12831,269,412,807,232,234,233],"class_list":{"0":"post-143427","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tallahassee","8":"tag-emergency-powers","9":"tag-florida","10":"tag-immigration","11":"tag-immigration-enforcement","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-ron-desantis","14":"tag-south-florida","15":"tag-tallahassee","16":"tag-tallahassee-headlines","17":"tag-tallahassee-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143427","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=143427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}