Governor Ron DeSantis is weighing in after a council of law enforcement officers decided to draft a letter to congressional leaders.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s about creating a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who otherwise have no criminal record. <\/p>\n
At a meeting of the State Immigration Enforcement Council, council chairman and Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd offered a real-life scenario.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was one lady who was brought here from Colombia as a child and now she\u2019s in her late 20s trying to go through the process to become legalized, and she was scooped up out of the waiting room at ICE for deportation back to Colombia,” Judd said. “It was like, where in Colombia do I go? I don\u2019t have any relatives, I don\u2019t know anybody in Colombia.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s an example of why Judd and the council are working on a letter to send the country\u2019s leaders.<\/p>\n
They want the priority to be on criminals, instead of law enforcement having to cast a wide net that\u2019s supposed to catch all undocumented immigrants.<\/p>\n
“If they waved a magic wand tomorrow and said we\u2019re gonna deal with that, we still have a lifetime of work of getting the illegal immigrants out of this country that are here illegally committing crime,\u201d Judd said.<\/p>\n
Another council member, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, said he would support sending a letter to the feds. He backed Judd\u2019s comments about wanting immigration enforcement \u2013 for criminals.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are 100% full throttle in favor of it and support (immigration enforcement),” Gualtieri said. “But, what\u2019s right\u2019s right, and what\u2019s not\u2019s not. And going after this mom who\u2019s got three kids, who\u2019s just trying to make a living, who\u2019s been here for 15 years, the whole scenario you described, that isn\u2019t right, and they do need to fix it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis idea that unless you\u2019re an axe murderer you should be able to stay, that is not consistent with our laws, and it\u2019s also not good policy,” said Governor Ron DeSantis, offering criticism a few days after the meeting. <\/p>\n
He suggested the council NOT send a letter.<\/p>\n
“You know, we have different people that are victimized by illegal aliens every day in this country. Not all of them have criminal records at the time. In fact, probably most of them don\u2019t. But under some view, it\u2019s like, okay yeah, you come illegally and then you stay until you commit a really violent crime,” DeSantis said. “That just doesn\u2019t work. It\u2019s incoherent, and it\u2019s not what the president ran on.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf somebody is here illegally in this country, then they have broken the law. Our job as law enforcement is to enforce the law,” said Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, quickly expressing disapproval over the letter.<\/p>\n
Judd, who is known for his tough stance on immigration, says his office remains focused on those accused of criminal complaints and sometimes the people with them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe stopped the car for DUI and he had two drunk buddies who were illegal as well \u2013 or a police encounter,” Judd said. “We\u2019ve not had any conflict out of the community because we\u2019re not going into strawberry fields or citrus groves or construction sites. It\u2019s not necessary to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Judd says he\u2019s not asking to give undocumented immigrants a free pass. He says they should pay a civil fine, learn English, and be required to work.<\/p>\n
A letter will be drafted and presented at the council\u2019s next quarterly meeting. If members approve it, the plan is to send it to congressional leaders as well as President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Governor Ron DeSantis is weighing in after a council of law enforcement officers decided to draft a letter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":201920,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":["post-201919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201919","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=201919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}