(C) Florida Phoenix This story was originally published by Florida Phoenix and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Gov. DeSantis quietly signs migrant-transport measure [1] ['Michael Moline', 'More From Author', '- February'] Date: 2023-02-15 Update: The governor’s office issued a terse press release at 5:37 p.m. announcing that he had signed the bill. Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed legislation shoring up his authority to transport asylum seekers to “sanctuary” jurisdictions, but he didn’t do it before news cameras during a press conference. His aides hadn’t even issued a press release as of Wednesday evening. Instead, the governor’s office posted a photo on his Facebook page of DeSantis signing the bill, passed during last week’s special session, into law. The signing on Facebook appeared to happen on Wednesday, and so far, 668 people made comments. “Thank you! Unfortunately, I live in a blue state that must suffer for the evil doers running our state! I appreciate your patriotism and continuous fight for our American freedoms and constitution. God bless you!” one woman said. Another commenter said: “What a waste of money that could be used to help Floridians with the problems they face. All this does is help those transported get guaranteed entry that they might not have gotten if vetted properly. More culture wars that divide this country and bring the white nationalists to Florida.” And another person said: “What a waste of taxpayers money, so sad! Why not do something about the home insurance prices, roads, disaster response/recovery, ect ect. But you focus on flying immigrants from other states to other locations in the states. S M D H !!!Too bad many people here has drank the kool-aide and keep voting against their own better interests. Wake up people, he could care less about you or your family period! What part about being a “conservative” does this align with again ….” The governor or an aide posted a comment and a photo for the signing: “Florida is using all tools available to protect our citizens from Biden’s open border policies,” an accompanying note reads. “I am glad to have signed legislation to continue the program of transporting illegal aliens to sanctuary jurisdictions. I thank the Legislature for maintaining this valuable tool.” DeSantis did get asked about the signing during an unrelated news conference held in West Palm Beach to talk about a proposed “Digital Bill of Rights” he plans to send to the Florida Legislature this year. In reply, he justified the transports as illuminating the situation on the Mexican border, where a crush of migrants is seeking access to the United States, and he argued they’d be better off in jurisdictions with friendly policies toward immigrants. Like Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., where his administration landed two planeloads carrying around 50 migrants in September with no advance notice to officials there. Three of those migrants are party to a civil-rights class action against the state. The problem was that legislation passed last year authorizing these transports specified that they should be in Florida, and the state’s contractors found those migrants in Texas. The new law clarifies that they can come from anywhere within the United States. “There has not been a single thing that has happened since Biden has been in that has raised awareness more than that,” DeSantis said during the “Digital Bill of Rights” news conference. “I’ve got enough issues dealing with people fleeing blue states to manage everybody that’s coming here; I can’t have people all across the border coming into Florida as well and us be able to handle it. It’s just too much to handle.” [END] --- [1] Url: https://floridaphoenix.com/2023/02/15/gov-desantis-quietly-signs-migrant-transport-measure/ Published and (C) by Florida Phoenix Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/floridaphoenix/