(The Center Square) – At a presidential campaign event in South Carolina on Monday, Gov. Ron DeSantis highlighted his plan to implement border security and “to stop the invasion at the southern border,” which he first announced in Eagle Pass, Texas, last month.
Speaking to an audience in Tega City, South Carolina, he said, once elected president, he plans to restore U.S. sovereignty at the southern border.
“We’ve heard a lot about this over the years,” DeSantis said, as he was repeatedly interrupted by a cheering crowd expressing support for border security. “They talk about doing all this, and it’s never quite gotten done. On day one, we’re going to declare it a national emergency, we’re going to mobilize all available resources, including the U.S. military. Yes, we will actually build the border wall which we need. We’ve got massive open spaces down there, hundreds and hundreds of miles with no barrier at all. We’ll do that.”
He also announced his plan to hold the Mexican drug cartels accountable on the same day an international coalition called for leadership on this issue. “We are going to do something that no president has been willing or able to do. We are going to hold the Mexican drug cartels accountable for what they are doing to this country,” he said.
On Monday, a newly formed Conservative U.S.-Mexico Policy Coalition called for a new U.S. policy with Mexico. They said, “The Mexican government is not an ally to the United States and can no longer properly be described as a partner. The Mexican government and Mexican criminal cartels exist in conscious and willing symbiosis, at multiple levels, up to and including the Mexican presidency, which is devastating the lives of citizens of Mexico and the United States.”
DeSantis also expressed similar sentiment he’s communicated along the campaign trail: the loss of the U.S. government’s control over its own border is “humiliating.”
“It’s humiliating as an American to go down to that border, which I’ve done many times, and to find out or be reminded that the Mexican drug cartels have more control of what’s going on at our southern border than the United States government does,” he said. “It’s pathetic, and Biden has let this happen.
“What does that mean for people throughout our country? It means tens of thousands of overdoses from the fentanyl that’s being brought across the border. It means human trafficking, in terms of minors being trafficked across the southern border. It has caused massive amounts of carnage because we don’t have the capability or the will to be able to enforce our border… We’re going to have Border Patrol out there, military out there.”
As governor, DeSantis has sent state resources twice to Texas to assist in Gov. Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star border security mission. Most recently, over 300 Florida personnel are working with the Texas National Guard. Over 100 Florida Highway Patrol troopers are working with Texas DPS officers to interdict human and drug trafficking and other crimes. In one recent example, a Florida trooper assigned to Kinney County, Texas, helped arrest an alleged human smuggler who was hiding teenagers in the trunk of his vehicle in 100-degree weather with a plan to transport them north to San Antonio.
Florida law enforcement officers working through Texas’ OLS have interacted with over 10,000 illegal foreign nationals and assisted the Texas Department of Public Safety with over 600 arrests, including felony charges for human smuggling, drug paraphernalia, unlawful carrying of weapons, a suspect with a capital murder warrant, and an MS-13 gang member currently on the U.S. Terror Watch List.
Florida troopers alone have encountered citizens of Bolivia, Brazil, China, Cuba, Ecuador, Haiti, Honduras, Iran, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Colombia, El Salvador, and African and Middle Eastern countries illegally entering the U.S.
