DeSantis says Florida ‘sending help’ to Texas border

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Tuesday said his state is “sending help” to Texas to “defend” the southern border amid controversy over immigration policy.

“At my direction, state agencies including law enforcement and the Florida National Guard are being deployed to Texas, with assets including personnel, boats and planes. While Biden ignores the crisis he created, Florida stands ready to help Texas respond to this crisis,” DeSantis said in a statement.

The update from the governor’s office on Tuesday delineated more than 1,100 troopers, officers, soldiers and personnel from the state ready for deployment to the U.S.-Mexico border — as well as more than a dozen drones, five fixed-wing aircraft and other assets.

The pandemic-era Title 42 immigration policy — which allowed border officials to quickly expel asylum-seeking migrants they encountered at the border — expired last week with the end of the national COVID-19 emergency declaration, reverting migrant processing back to Title 8.

Many said they expected a surge of migrants at the southern border as the policy switched over, but the anticipated influx hasn’t arrived.

Biden administration officials last week said they didn’t see “a substantial increase overnight or an influx at midnight.”

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Sunday that Border Patrol has noted a drop in encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border since the end of Title 42. 

Texas has been part of a long-running move from some GOP governors in border states to bus migrants north to Democrat-led cities in protest of the administration’s immigration policies, and it has sent more migrants to the Naval Observatory — Vice President Harris’s D.C. residence — in the wake of Title 42’s expiration.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) on Tuesday announced the state sent 18,500 migrants to D.C., New York City, Chicago and Philadelphia. Abbott also thanked Florida for its support in a letter urging other fellow governors to aid the state in responding to “the flood of illegal border activity invited by the Biden administration.”

Florida’s aid move was made under the Emergency Management Assistance Compact, an interstate mutual aid agreement.