(C) Florida Phoenix This story was originally published by Florida Phoenix and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Statewide grand jury gives DeSantis plenty of support for his anti-migrant campaign [1] ['Michael Moline', 'More From Author', '- November'] Date: 2023-11-27 A Florida statewide grand jury report Monday alleges that the Biden administration is to blame for drug- and human trafficking across the U.S.-Mexico border and related crime within the state. The 146-page document comes at a time when Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is running for president in 2024 — less than two months away from the Iowa caucuses — and has been planning to tackle undocumented immigration if he wins the election. DeSantis is among the Republican governors who have relentlessly attacked President Joe Biden over immigration and he’s supported legislation making life tougher for migrants in Florida under asylum claims. In its report on the border crisis posted Monday on the Florida Supreme Court’s website, the grand jury — which DeSantis called for in June 2022 — claims that such crimes “are sometimes actually enabled by [federal] governmental agencies, policies, and activities; and there are things that can be done about them. “We are also convinced that, because the driving forces are largely federal policies, and political incentives seem to not prioritize solving the problems, it will be up to Florida and other states to help themselves, at least in the short term,” the report alleges (emphasis in the original). The document is the fifth report from the panel. The Florida Supreme Court issued the formal authorization for the panel to get to work under supervision by Judge Ellen S. Masters, chief judge of the Tenth Judicial Circuit, who sits in Barstow, in Central Florida. The Phoenix asked press aides to DeSantis and Attorney General Ashley Moody, also a Republican, for comment but hasn’t heard back yet. We’re waiting for the Florida Immigrant Coalition to get back to us, too. Jurisdiction? We’ve also requested comment from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. It appears from the report that the feds declined to cooperate and it isn’t clear what the state panel can do about it apart from perhaps a lawsuit against the Biden administration. “We are aware that other witnesses were ordered by [federal] bureaucrats and their lawyers not to appear, to refuse to provide some documents or answer some questions, or to withhold information and subject themselves to contempt and jail even in the face of subpoenas issued under the auspices of the Supreme Court of Florida,” the report complains. Anna Eskamani, a Democratic state House member from Orange County, said on X that the report presages a rough year for immigrants. “Based on this report, we can expect more incendiary language and policies next legislative session targeting immigrants,” she wrote. “I wish we had a grand jury report on issue like property insurance instead,” Eskamani added by text. The Legislature will open its regular session for 2024 in January. Wayward NGOs State law allows appointment of statewide grand juries consisting of 18 members upon a petition by the governor, with day-to-day proceedings subject to advice from the Office of Statewide Prosecutor, within the Attorney General’s Office, to investigate organized crime extending beyond any single state prosecutor’s jurisdiction. Nothing in law prohibits these panels from looking into alleged multi-state or federal-level wrongdoing, even if the state lacks enforcement power over federal officials. The new report called for a number of responses to the arrival of asylum seekers at the southern border, including a tax on remittances to families in their home countries and further investigation into nongovernmental organizations that the panel alleged “actively obstructed our investigation” by refusing to comply with subpoenas or answer questions, “supposedly under orders from the federal government.” These groups “know the law regarding our jury’s term of service; they know that even if we sought to have them held in contempt, they could delay final court action until our term expires, successfully ‘running out the clock,’” the report continues. “We recommend that our leaders consider the formation of another statewide grand jury solely to investigate their questionable activities within Florida and their operations outside our borders which result in the use of taxpayer and donor funds to break, and help others to break, both state and federal laws.” In a footnote, the panel says it was declining to name the organizations because “Florida law gives them the right to ask the courts to conceal this entire report (and the right to appeal any adverse decision), and thereby delay its release — and we have no doubt that they would exercise this right. “We may instead identify them in a separate report. If the publication of that report is delayed, readers will know how, why, and who is responsible,” the footnote concludes. The report makes no mention of the economic and political dynamics driving immigration, such as climate change and resulting social upheaval, or repressive regimes and criminal violence in immigrant’s home countries, or how to address the problem at the root. Remittances tax As for remittances, the grand jury pointed to evidence that cartels are exploiting these transfers to facilitate crimes including drug- and- human trafficking and kidnapping. The panel subpoenaed three banks and three remittance companies, the report says, and found that within a single year they conducted 17 million remittances worth $5.2 billion, sometimes to areas unconnected to the sender. The report recommends that Florida tax remittances, noting that a 1.5% fee would yield as much as $40 million. “[T]his is a staggering amount of money which is leaving not just the economy of our state but that of our entire country. It will never be taxed, spent, or invested into our state and its people. It is gone. Florida should recoup at least some portion of it, especially because these types of transfers are ripe for criminal exploitation,” the report says. ‘Masterly or maladroit’ The document does make multiple reference to alleged malfeasance by the Biden administration, as when it suggests “decisions made in the District of Columbia are profoundly, and apparently intentionally, producing what is nothing short of a humanitarian disaster.” “Whether one believes the purposes behind current federal policies are appropriate or abominable, and whether their execution if masterly or maladroit, it is beyond real dispute that the current state of affairs is a predictable consequence of those policies,” the report says. “We learned that, if anything, many Floridians are (just as we were before undertaking this inquiry) almost dangerously naive and unaware of the true magnitude and malevolence of the illegal immigration industry,” it continues. “What we discovered has been at varying times sobering, upsetting, depressing, and the cause of significant outrage. The short answer is that there are most certainly crimes being committed, including by some of our fellow state residents, which abet transnational and local criminal organizations and individuals in their trafficking of people (including and especially children), criminal actors, fraudulent documents, and drugs into our state, extracting money in return. “These crimes are sometimes actually enabled by governmental agencies, policies, and activities; and there are things that can be done about them,” the report concludes. The grand jury recommended repeal of a state law allowing releases from customs detention for undocumented immigrants who are witnesses or victims to domestic violence, rape, sexual exploitation, sexual assault, murder, manslaughter, assault, battery, human trafficking, kidnapping, false imprisonment, involuntary servitude, fraud in foreign labor contracting, blackmail, extortion, or witness tampering. The report asserts that the section doesn’t require the witnesses or victims to cooperate with law enforcement. Cartels Another provision spares crime victims or witnesses if they “timely and in good faith responds to the [law enforcement] entity’s or agency’s request for information and cooperation in the investigation or prosecution of the offense.” But the law doesn’t specify that the crime must have occurred within the United States or recently, and the grand jury recommended its provisions be narrowed to those circumstances. The report recommends tightening requirements for unaccompanied minors to qualify for immigration status on the basis of familial abandonment, suggesting they be handled through family court and the state Department of Children and Families. The document contains a lengthy description of the predations of international criminal organizations, including Mexican cartels and Chinese suppliers of fentanyl precursors and money-laundering services. It says these groups have hacked the government’s CPB-One app, designed to facilitate the immigration process, to set up fake admission interviews; this, it says allows members to funnel migrants into Mexico and from there into the United States. Immigrants benefiting from these efforts may be required to smuggle drugs, weapons, or cash it says. Given their motivation to channel criminals and terrorists into the United States, the grand jury recommended these cartels be designated as terrorist operations, although it conceded that only the federal government could make that happen. The report suggests that that state should consider a sentencing enhancement for people who’ve been deported for crimes and reentered to commit new offenses. ‘Potemkin veneer’ The document details the frustrations of enforcement officers working within the system, attributing it not only to an overwhelming surge of migrants but also to federal perfidy. “Candidly, the policies being forced upon Border Control … and other law enforcement agencies seem designed to intentionally discourage actual law enforcement. This Potemkin veneer fools the unaware into thinking that laws are being enforced. But it overwhelms with sheer volume the innate disposition we sensed among many of these witnesses to buckle down, work harder, and try to catch the bad guys,” it says. The grand jury attempts to cover the backs of Gov. DeSantis and the Republican-dominated Legislature for immigrant labor shortages in agriculture and construction linked to a new state law targeting these workers, arguing that shortages predated that law’s effective date in July. “We think Florida was correct to make it more difficult to illegally employ those who are not lawfully present here, because we have received much evidence that those workers are often targets of exploitation and artificially low wages; they are afraid to complain about such treatment and some are working to pay cartels or as a consequence of human trafficking. If Florida is less attractive to illegally present persons, that is not a flaw of the legislation. Less exploitation of vulnerable people is an unqualified good,” the report says. The panel recommended stronger legal sanctions against the fraudulent use of fake identification documents by immigrants who lack legitimate documents of their own. [END] --- [1] Url: https://floridaphoenix.com/2023/11/27/statewide-grand-jury-gives-desantis-plenty-of-support-for-his-anti-migrant-campaign/ 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/