(The Center Square) – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said on Monday that he’s had “great discussions” with legislative leaders and thinks “we’re going to land the plane” when it comes to finding a compromise to the recently-passed immigration bill.
The second-term Republican governor made the remarks as he unveiled his fiscal 2025-26 budget proposal.
He has not taken action on the Tackling and Reforming Unlawful Migration Policy Act, better known as the TRUMP Act. DeSantis, initially threatening a veto, has repeatedly said doesn’t go far enough to stop illegal immigration and would actually constrain present efforts if it became law.
“So I don’t necessarily have an announcement now, but I’m pretty sure we’re going to get there,” DeSantis said. “I endorsed most of these people to be able to get in and I wouldn’t have done that if I didn’t think that they were good conservative members that would support conservative policy. I think it was an aberration last week.
“I do think we’re going to, we’re going to be united on this issue, and then we can move forward. So I look forward to working and continuing to have those discussions.”
DeSantis praised the Legislature for its work on conservative agenda items in the past six years. He also urged lawmakers to listen to their voters on the immigration issue.
“If you look at Florida, other states have come here to try to learn what we’re doing, and some of the stuff may be executive, but a lot of it is to follow what legislation these legislators have passed,” DeSantis said. “So they’ve passed bold, bold initiatives across a wide variety of subject matter, and really help lead the nation.
“Part of the reason why we’ve gone from a deficit of 300,000 registered Republicans to now close to 1.2 million, because people do respond to that leadership.”
DeSantis called for a special session a few weeks ago that would address illegal immigration and other issues, such as condominium regulation and election security. Lawmakers balked in a letter, saying that many of those issues should wait until the start of the session on March 4.
Then legislators gaveled out of the session called by DeSantis without considering any legislation and initiated their own special session with one bill, the TRUMP Act, that was passed Tuesday.
