WATCH: Gov. DeSantis discusses immigration reform and new bills in Florida

pretty important legislation into law here momentarily I am joined here today by the president of Florida sheriff's Association uh Sheriff Al ninheis from Hernando County of course we have the CEO of Miller Electric who's hosting us Henry Brown I want to thank him for doing that we have Senator clay Yarborough with us here today and we have Representatives Michael Black and Jacques so thank you all for for being and thanks for your great work on all of this and then we're also going to be joined by Nikki Jones and her daughters Harley and Raven who you will hear from a little bit later so so thank you for uh for coming uh Nikki uh I don't think anybody uh could have uh any other uh view but that uh we've got massive problems at our Southern border with Mexico and this is something that is um response the responsibility of Joe Biden this is a responsibility that he has defaulted on really from day one of his presidency and he is charged with ensuring the Safety and Security of this country he's charged with ensuring that the laws are Faithfully executed and he has refused to meet that obligation and in Florida we recognize this from day one and we've acted really since he took office to combat the negative effects of his border policy worse this week with the expiration of title 42. you're going to end up having 10 000 15 000 a day potentially uh last year last fiscal year they had almost 2.4 million encounters with illegal aliens that's the highest ever in our history even beating Biden's previous record of 1.96 million and that's just the encounters there's other people coming in who don't get encountered and so the numbers are a lot higher than that but if you look at that almost 2.4 million that's more than the combined populations of the cities of Jacksonville Miami Orlando and Tampa the Biden Administration recently claimed that when it comes to Illegal immigration quote you've seen it come down by more than 90 percent that is a lie that is something that they're trying to feed you and hope their buddies in corporate media will run with but really untrue and demonstrably untrue so you have huge huge problems uh with title 42 expiring uh this is Biden's estimates are they think it could be up to 13 000 illegal aliens crossing the border every single day and at that pace on an annual basis that would be 4.5 million and that's roughly the size of Miami-Dade and Broward counties combined Florida's two most populous counties and so title 42 is ending they had tried to get rid of it earlier it's tied to covid so they actually wanted covid restrictions for you but they wanted to remove title 42 for illegal aliens and so we in Florida with the attorney general Ashley Moody we sued the by the administration to keep title 42 in place and we were able uh to win that case and actually would have been a lot worse over the last year or so had we not done that now that the covet emergency is ending quote unquote title 42 is going to expire and so you are going to see a massive surge of illegal aliens you have a duty to ensure that these borders are secure this is a huge disaster on our hands and it does not comport with the duties of his office to just allow this to happen you know Alexander Hamilton wrote In The Federalist Papers that energy and the executive is the leading character of good characteristic of good government where is This president's energy where's his Vigor where's his uh commitment to the cause he's just sitting around doing nothing of importance or nothing of note while the American people suffer and what is what is the problem with this well first of all it's just chaos we're supposed to be the world's leading superpower and yet we can't even maintain control of Our Own Southern border the Mexican drug cartels have more to say about what goes on in the southern border than our own U.S government does and so you have a

situation where there is just no rule of law it's been totally tossed out the window and that is not what you're what we want in a constitutional republic you also have the fact that the sheer number of people coming these border towns they get overwhelmed with the number of people but then when they settle them in the interior of our country you have all kinds of burdens placed on taxpayers on medical on education on on criminal justice all of these different things impact communities in a very very big way and you want to know how it's a burden all you have to do is look back when we help send 50 illegal aliens to Martha's Vineyard one of the most wealthy enclaves in this country they remove them off that Island the next day because they said they couldn't accommodate 50. we'll look at some of these other places they're getting thousands of people coming illegally and yet they're just supposed to grin grin and bear it of course you do have criminal aliens that are coming across the border and people say Florida you're not on the border what do you care well October 21 you had an illegal illegal alien stab a man to death right here in Jacksonville March of last year illegal alien murdered a couple who were participating in Bike Week in Daytona and in September we had an illegal alien drive a front loader at a construction site that killed a sheriff's deputy in Tampa Bay and so you've seen this happen just in in Florida you're seeing it happen all over all over the country you also have massive amounts of fentanyl that are pouring into our country tens of thousands of deaths because of fentanyl every single year and it's all coming across the border it's all being run by the drug cartels and this border situation is saying you're going to be able to move as much fentanyl across the border as you need to we had just last year over a hundred thousand overdose deaths and I think you're likely to see that continue with the amount of product that's being moved in so this is a huge huge dereliction of Duty to ignore the security and the borders of your own country but as I mentioned we saw this from the very beginning of the Biden Administration and we've worked very hard to do look states are limited in terms of what they do I think a good reform federally would be deputized states to enforce immigration law Texas should be able to send them back to Mexico or back to these other other countries you shouldn't have to turn them over to border patrol and then Biden orders them released back into our own country of course more people are going to come if that's the case so I think I would States would be deputized to do more but as it is we're doing the limit of what what states can do we have sent in 2021 when this thing was really taken off we sent Florida law enforcement to Texas to the border to help with interdictions and you know those guys did a good job I think the problem was as people come they get interdicted then you turn them over to border patrol and border patrol just releases them into our country anyways and so you're thinking to yourself you know why is that a great use of our resources if it'd be one thing if you were repelling it from happening then I think that'd be great I'd be happy to do it uh so so that was something that some of them were able to be charged with crimes which was great but many of them were not because they basically came illegally they didn't necessarily have drugs on them so they get released into our country and that that's not not good policy um we also issued an executive order that prohibited agencies in the State of Florida from providing any support for the resettlement of illegals in Florida and the prohibited licensing facilities that house uh illegal alien minors and this is a cottage industry these organizations make a lot of money off this you know you want your borders enforced but a lot of them don't because they make more money uh having having the open border we also sign legislation that prohibited government contracts with any private entity that is assisting the Biden Administration in resettling illegal aliens into the State of Florida and then we signed legislation requiring all public employers contractors subcontractors attempting to enter contracts with government employers uh to do mandatory e-verify to verify that the workers are legally employed we also sued the Biden Administration for his Catch and Release policy and we won in federal court and the Panhandle and we were glad that that happened we also last year signed legislation cracking down on opioid dealers and traffickers subjecting people who distribute certain controlled substances that lead to somebody's death to a potential conviction for first degree felony murder and increasing the mandatory minimum sentence for trafficking fentanyl to up to 20 years and at the end of the day when you're dealing with fentanyl there's a whole host of ways you have to approach it we believe in in working on the demand side the first lady has put in a lot of programs in schools to try to let students know hey messing around with drugs in this day and age you may think it's something but if they put fentanyl in that you could die and that's just the reality of what we're seeing and so you've got to fight it from the demand side you've got to let people know that doing fentanyl is almost like playing Russian roulette with your life it's not worth doing you also have to work on the treatment side we have a coordinated opioid recovery Network we call the core Network and what that does you know somebody overdoses and then they are go to the hospital and then they're they're revived to just put them back on the street if they're addicted they are likely to have relapse and so with core you have interventions you get them on appropriate medication or you get them appropriate medical attention and the goal is is to get them to to live uh productive lives alongside this addiction and of the people that went into the program the relapse rate has been like five percent so that's something that's really really good so you got to do all these things but you do have to fight the supply and you have to make it so that if you're bringing this stuff in uh we're going to hold you accountable last week I signed a bill that is enhanced penalties for fentanyl dealers who put it Market it to minors by putting it in candy and things of that nature we're throwing the book at them if they're going after our children but it's very important that we understand that that is something that makes a big big difference we also formed a strike force of state and local law enforcement to interdict human smuggling and human trafficking and to seize illegal drugs and weapons being transported into the state so a lot of this is in the Panhandle because people are coming on I-10 but it's really happened all over this all over the state in various ways the strike force has resulted in nearly 300 felony charges more than 40 human smuggling charges and nearly 130 drug charges and part of that is people do that you need all them accountable but it also sends a signal to other people they're thinking about coming from the border smuggling people somewhere Florida is not a good place for you to do that okay because you're going to end up facing pushback if you want to go somewhere where they are a sanctuary State then do California or do Illinois or something but don't do here because we're going to fight back we also petition the Florida Supreme Court to impanel a Statewide grand jury to examine international human smuggling networks that bring illegal aliens to the southern border and ultimately into the United States including into Florida and it has released some of its initial findings so these grand juries they can issue reports as they go and if you read the report that they most recently did I mean these these miners are are basically victims of trafficking many of them have been sexually abused some of them are mistreated in other ways and this is all happening with the imprimatur of your federal government and I think it's a disgrace we also secured another 12 million what we initially secured 12 million dollars for the illegal alien transport program so we did that for example with Martha's Vineyard uh we also got more money in this year's budget to be able to help um uh with that with that problem it's not just U.S Mexico border though if you look you have boats trying to come into Florida from places like Haiti and so we started to see a spike in this and the Coast Guard does a good job but they don't have enough assets Biden will not send more assets so you start to see boats getting through and then at one point the feds dumped like 350 illegal aliens in the Florida Keys so we said that um that's unacceptable so we declared a state of emergency and then we surge Florida State Maritime resources to work alongside the Coast Guard fill in the gaps and what we've been able to do is since August we've had more than 12 000 illegal migrants attempting to come to Florida shores they've been interdicted and repatriated to Haiti or Cuba or wherever they were coming from we've also removed 393 vessels from Florida shores and waterways that have been used by illegal migrants to enter the state and then back in February and so so that is a huge success right there because I mean like just imagine uh if we had left it to the feds and they don't have enough resources you'd probably have hundreds more boats that would end up getting to Florida shores so we're proud of really leaning in on all these issues we think it's very important obviously if we had a different Administration be a lot easier because you know you'd be able to to actually deal with the problem at its source as it is we've got to use the tools we have so in February we were in Jacksonville and we proposed uh strong legislative isolation to curb illegal immigration both deterring illegal immigrants from coming to Florida but also holding people accountable within Florida who are involved in illegal immigration and so we made that promise we said that we were going to go big and today we deliver on that Promise by signing Senate Bill 1718 and even the New York Times admitted this is the strongest legislation against illegal immigration anywhere in the country what the bill does is a number of different things this makes Florida the largest state in the country to do full e-verify for employment and that's important because the people going to come if they get benefits and so what you want to do is say there's not benefits for coming illegally you're either here as a native or you come legally and those are two two fine things but to come across the border and end up getting benefits in Florida you know does not makes sense so we already have it's already against the law for someone to be employed if they're here illegally but the e-verify provides a way to make sure that that's enforceable so we think that that's something that's going to make a big big difference Senate Bill 1718 also enhances human smuggling penalties in Florida and subjects offenders to prosecution under the Florida RICO Act which was a recommendation from the Statewide grand jury that we had had and so if you're knowingly transporting illegal aliens into Florida you can be faced up to five years in prison and a five thousand dollar fine uh per offense if you're caught transporting five or more illegal aliens um or an unaccompanied illegal alien minor or you have a prior conviction for human smuggling you can get a ten thousand dollar fine and up to 15 years in prison at the end of the day you wouldn't have the illegal immigration problem if you didn't have a lot of people that were facilitating this in our country and so in Florida that's not a good bet for you to do that here and this bill uh shows that that's the case the bill also prohibits County governments and ngos from using tax dollars to provide IDs for illegal aliens it invalidates out-of-state licenses issued to illegal aliens and it makes it a felony for illegal aliens to use a fake ID to gain employment we don't have in Florida and we shouldn't have driver's licenses for illegal aliens a lot of people in across the country who want open borders they want driver's licenses and you have it and I think in California and a number of these other states we've never done that but what happens is you have some of these local governments they're actually working with private groups to generate ID cards to be able to be used as if that makes you legal to be here so we're not going to recognize that we're also not going to recognize a driver's license from California that was issued to somebody here illegally or these other states and so we're making sure that in Florida we're doing it legal and and we're doing it right uh the bill and part of I think that the issue you know with the elite because you you're going to hear from you're going to hear from an angel wife and you're from from rep Michael Angel mom and that's really really important when you have somebody here illegally committing criminal offenses against our own people those crimes would not have been committed if they just weren't brought in illegally and so that's a huge huge thing and it's something that we spend a lot of time on and that's important it's also the case that even somebody not committing crimes it's imposing huge costs on our community and one of the ways it imposes huge costs is medical costs because you show up to an emergency room they have they they treat you doesn't matter if you're legal or illegal of course if most of the people here illegally or probably all of them they're not paying for any of the services they're getting you're paying for it as taxpayers and so we started in 2021 collecting with our state agency's data on health care costs for illegal aliens and we found that this is a lot of money during the 2021-22 fiscal year health care costs for illegal aliens in Florida was nearly 340 million dollars and taxpayers were on the hook for two-thirds of that cost so the Biden Administration is trying to increase those costs um they want to um actually use Medicaid to cover illegal aliens which we don't support and won't do in Florida but that's their that's their Vision in terms of what they want to do but what the bill does um is it says you have to collect data at the hospital level about care that's being given to people here illegally because we were able to identify some we think that there's a lot more and the public deserves an honest accounting of how much this is costing us in terms of services and Health Care is probably number one and then as I mentioned we also secured an additional 12 million dollars for the illegal alien transport program to Sanctuary jurisdictions a lot of these Sanctuary jurisdictions they say they want open borders they say that nobody's illegal they get mad when people want to enforce the border and yet when these people the the illegal aliens are brought to their jurisdictions they scream bloody murder you saw it in Martha's Vineyard you see it in New York City you see it in these other places and the reality is it's shining a light on how absurd the federal government's policies are we have to stop this nonsense this is not good for our country and when even Sanctuary jurisdictions are saying they can't bear the burden of it you know this is no way to run a government this is no way to have a country based on the rule of law this is no way to keep your people safe so today we are acting with the strongest measures yet we're proud of the legislature for stepping up and for getting this uh getting this done but we're bracing for some turbulent times ahead and I think when you have a a president who's turned a blind eye to what's gone on in the Border I don't think he's even visited the border the whole time you know he's he's been in office uh when you have that you're likely to see it see it get a lot worse so we're protecting Floridians with the full extent of our powers to do that but um it's sad it's sad to see what's happened it's sad to see these images of the lawlessness it's sad to hear the stories of the of people that have been victimized by people coming across the border it's sad to see the the mothers who've lost children as a result of fentanyl overdose this has taken a big toll on our country and Florida's fighting back okay uh we're going to hear from some of our speakers so rep Michael why don't you come up [Applause] well hello everyone thank you Governor DeSantis this bill that we're signing today we are making history this is something that has never been done in our nation and it's because we have a governor that's bold enough that's courageous enough and that cares enough to say that your family matters you matter the safety of our communities matter and you can't get any better than that and and I just thank you governor for for standing up when other Governors have just bowed to the Biden Administration and cower it to them our governor said no in this state he has control he's rolling he's running this state and that this will not continue on I want to thank my husband Bobby where are you right there okay I want to thank you because you when we were impacted by losing our son and I'll tell this story in just a moment he really did as as guys do he pushed his grief aside to hold us together and our uh daughter is over there with our grandson that had to leave because you all would have had a whole different type of entertainment from a five-year-old and I thank them for just uh sticking with me and standing behind me and standing beside me and enduring so much grief and so much pain and our oldest son is working and I also want to thank senator ingolia who ran this bill on the on the Senate side I ran it on the outside he really fought for this bill to stay impact because I'll explain in just a minute exactly how this really does uh help us enforce the laws I want to thank my Prime co-sposter Cole sponsor I'm sorry Senator Senator maybe that's a future thing I don't know representative shock if you could just stand up and just you guys just wave to them I brought them on board uh somewhere at the beginning of the bill we told uh beforehand and I said you know I think they're going to go in a Direction that uh is gonna turn this thing into a legal ways so I wanted you to come on board and he did it and uh Jacques represents not only uh the strength of what it means to be an American but he is uh a legal immigrant and uh his family did it the right way they did it the way that our law says so I thank you for your support and thank you for helping me with this bill I want to thank representative Byrd I'm not sure where you are yes if you all don't know not representative your secretary now I'm trying to keep up bear with me um if you all don't know uh secretary Byrd was then representative and he started with the immigration package as far as the e-verify and you fought hard and you stood on that floor and you brought across for us um the ban on Sanctuary cities and I came and spoken in committees for you all that don't know and I remember you standing until two o'clock in the morning fighting thank you thank you and we're able to pick this up again Governor thank you I think my leadership in the house uh for standing behind me today we are making history because we are saying that Florida is the beacon of light it's the Beacon of Hope strength Direction and where the evidence that it can be done and we're showing this is how you do it today I'm grateful that we are a Law and Order State and we're taking a stand at American citizens shouldn't have to compete against employers that put their profit margins over the rights of Americans to protect our families you see our family was impacted and a reason why for you all that haven't heard my story is our 21 year old son Brandon Randolph Michael on August 15 2007 he was on his way to go and cash his his uh paycheck right here in Jacksonville right off of St John's Bluff and he was hit and killed by twice deported illegal that means he was deported twice and defied our laws and came back our family was devastated we still are not we're never going to behold we we have not gotten over you never get over it for a family it is the worst nightmare for for a mother I mean I I we went through so much and we still are going through a lot but you see the illegal they hit Brandon the reason why we need mandatory verifies he was working somewhere he was going to buy paint on that horrible day and he didn't know the reason why I drive not giving them driver's licenses is so critical to this and to us is that he didn't know that he couldn't make a u-turn at that at that location at the intersection where he plowed into her our child couldn't he didn't know our laws couldn't understand our signs but yet other states give them driver's licenses but in the State of Florida we're saying no that's not going to happen the reason why this bill is so critical is because every step of the way there was preventive things that could have happened that was totally ignored when I asked who is the employer that was hiring him illegally because he was sending his paycheck back to his country I was told as a mama I didn't have the right to know that because you're right that I was going to go after them you are absolutely right I was going to go after them we cannot ignore the needs of our seniors it really bothers me when we're able to give resources to people who are not here legally when we have a legal process but then we have senior citizens that cannot afford to pay their bills they have to decide are they going to be able to eat it bothers me that we have veterans like my husband 20 years in the military and they're sleeping on the street but we have illegals in hotels that bothers me but we're saying in the State of Florida that once again we are leading the way that this can stop this can be prevented and this is how you do it we cannot ignore the fight that the administration in Washington D.C has turned to death there we're not doing that because they have done that we've decided today our governor will be signing it that your lives matter your family lives matter your safety matter the impact of our resources it should go to Americans today we're standing with our governor to say we will defend our families will protect our children we'll protect our community our resources belong to us in your safety Governor thank you for listening to me thank you for listening to me about my family or reaching out to us you know some people think that this just started but this is why I ran all the way back from the beginning we went and we we've been working together and and he embraced us and he listened to what I had to say and I saw such a strong Governor I saw the compassion in your eyes and I saw that look of a father and I'll never forget that and that's something that no one could ever tell me was not real I know that it was and you didn't just promise us but you you made good on those promises you didn't just listen but you took action and we're blessed because of that I think you all need to just give them a Round of Applause [Applause] you trusted me as a freshman when I was running uh for office you trusted me and you trusted me as a freshman to take on such a heavy and a big Bill and uh thank you for that because I wasn't going to stop I don't know you know some people with mamas we just don't stop you are not going to be able to stop us you are not going to be able to to discourage us you're not going to be able to scare us we're going to keep it rolling and we're going to get get it across the finish line most of all I thank you for protecting our families because we know as you have spoken that danger is is coming we are having an invasion whether people want to admit it or not and I'm grateful I'm sure you all are to live in a state that is led by the greatest governor I'm grateful to live in a state that listens to his people and I'm grateful to have been given this bill and to see it all the way through with all of their help all of the leadership my family the governor Senator angolia representative Byrd we got it across that finish line thank you thank you to my staff destiny she's my D.A they were up late and Logan he's my

LA and they they were working hard because I I'm not easy to work with when it comes to getting I want these when I want them because we got to get it done we got a job to do so God bless you all God bless you Governor God bless your family God bless each one of you all God bless our nation and God bless the free state of Florida thank you Sarah [Applause] good morning I'm Hernando County Sheriff alanine High South also happen to be this year's president of the Florida sheriff's Association and you know I first want to go on record as saying thank you Governor he's not just courageous but does he have a tremendous grasp of my new details over such a broad spectrum I see people nodding their heads I I thank you for taking the time to really educate yourself on these issues Governor uh it amazes me every time I want to thank Senate President pasadomo speaker Paul Renner Senator blazing Golia we heard about that he's happens to be my Senator representative Michael thank you for taking tragedy and turning it into something good I certainly appreciate that and we thank all of our leadership for their Forward Thinking and their support of law enforcement now this legislation is safeguarding our residents our families and those visitors that come to our great state and we don't have to look far you've already heard a little bit about this or or look long to find criminals who are here illegally committing serious crimes including murder here in Jacksonville a 60-year sentence was just within the last few days handed out to a murderer who was here in the country illegally the criminal was initially apprehended by border patrol and I've been to the border and they they have they are overwhelmed in Texas and after after crossing the border he claimed to be a juvenile and even provided a false name to law enforcement go figure like so many others across our Southern border he was served a notice to appear and was released into the interior of the United States under the backwards border policy of this current Administration under President Biden an illegal alien I believe personally is is flawed and in this particular one uh this illegal alien was flowed into Jacksonville in the dead of night without any notice to local law enforcement where he was released without any supervision whatsoever it was only after beating and stabbing to death a local resident that this dangerous criminal was properly dealt with Pinellas County as you also heard kind of in my area of the state also lost to Deputy heart-wrenching story at the hands of someone here illegally back in September a 19-year veteran of the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office sheriff's deputy Mike Hartwick was struck and killed last year by an illegal alien who was employed by a construction company out of Tampa after murdering Deputy Hartwick he tried to cover up his tracks and cover up the murder and lie to law enforcement about his identity this murderer came across the southern border without incident and made his way to Tampa where he's hired along with several other immigrants Florida as you heard the governor say is absolutely not a sanctuary State and illegal immigrants are not authorized to work here in addition to Those who commit violent crimes illegal immigration has also been adding to our fight in law enforcement against human trafficking as well as drug trafficking and these Common Sense policies that are in these bills that are going to be signed today and the added technology which I'll talk about very briefly will help law enforcement do our job rapid DNA Florida is going to be on The Cutting Edge of this technology this will allow us to hold criminals accountable and solve crimes quickly currently it takes somewhere between 30 to 90 days to have DNA of someone arrested have it tested and manually manually tested and then put into the computer to compare the results to unsolved crimes across the entire country now this includes people who are arrested for serious crimes that are here illegally and booked into our County jails during our Hernando County legislative session back in January I happen to mention to Senator angolia that FDLE commissioner glass and I were talking about rapid DNA and as we discussed how it would take a little bit of workload off of FDLE and at the same time speed up the testing process commissioner glass and I then talked about testing illegal aliens even those that are arrested for minor crimes which is not currently happening prior to this law enforcement we only tested people who were arrested for serious crimes mainly felonies therefore if we arrested somebody for example for shoplifting or DUI and found out that they were here illegally they would not heretic before be tested now regardless of the crime if they're here illegally and they get arrested they will be tested and we should actually know within about 90 minutes if their DNA matches an unsolved crime a serious unsolved crime anywhere in the United States and we will know it before they are released back into society also once they're tested they'll be in the system if they go commit a crime in another week or two a serious crime and they leave DNA their DNA will be in the system so again through leadership's support of law enforcement and Technology this pilot program is going to allow us to know if an arrested person is a suspect in a serious unsolved crime within about an hour or two and again before he or she is released on a bail or any other through any other method and it's even if that person is here illegally and is arrested for a relatively minor crime our Florida legislators knew that waiting on the sidelines and as well as our governor knew waiting on the sidelines was absolutely not an option as our heroes are fighting this trafficking epidemic our legislators came through with the tools needed for us to continue our 50 plus year low in crime thank you each and every one of you not just our legislators and our governor but thank everybody for your support of law enforcement we never take it for granted thank you all very much [Applause] okay Nikki Jones hi my name's Nikki and I'm here to tell my story because I feel like it's important everyone knows the aftermath of illegal alien crimes my husband was killed on November 2nd 2019 by an illegal alien drinking and driving um unfortunately he was unfortunately we weren't able to um sentence him sorry it's okay let me um the illegal alien had multiple traffic violations including DUIs and kept getting let out on U.S soil prior to him killing my husband he had four violations and never got deported he even attended DUI school as an illegal alien in the state of Florida the night he killed my husband he had learned how to manipulate the system and refused a breathalyzer test and field sobriety test despite evidence of alcohol on the scene there was lack of evidence for the court system which resulted in a lesser charge ultimately he was sentenced to four years in jail with plans of deportation currently he is at a nice Detention Facility after serving only three years the aftermath is devastating beyond words our children I have two girls one was only six months and the only was only two years old the time he was killed they will never know their father or know how much he loved him they will never experience father-daughter dances or go fishing with him which my husband loved to do and always talked about teaching the kids how to fish when they got older every day I wake up and I pray to God that I will be able to keep my home for my kids and I we had just bought our home my husband just retired from the military and um we settled in Plant City Florida um and so now I was left with two kids at the age of six months and two years old a mortgage child care and everything else you know the rest of the bills nobody holds responsibility for illegal aliens in the United States so when an American or legal family is destroyed there are no funds to stabilize that family no businesses are held accountable no sponsors are held responsible no relief programs are available nothing I've tried I've called for the past four years multiple resources and I always get turned down my husband served this country for 20 years to just end up killed by an illegal alien on his own soil he didn't deserve this absolutely he didn't I didn't deserve this and most of all our children did not deserve this we did everything right in life um we abide it by laws we were good good citizens and were destroyed and now every day I have to wake up are me and my girls going to have our home I am in complete support of this immigration bill because it is a start to protecting our families and children once we are able to protect our families and children we can stabilize the victims in an immediate household such as mine my husband was a protector our provider and rebuild our state Florida can be America's example and thank you governor desantes and cayenne or representative Michael for taking this important first step thank you [Applause] there's some organizations [Applause] feeling in okay all right and you they were so good during the speech too good job guys thank you so much for that's great Behavior thank you I know it's not easy because uh we're not always so lucky at home okay Henry good morning good morning what a what a difficult uh few stories to follow thank you Nikki and representative Michaels for for sharing your story my name is Henry Brown and I'm the CEO of Miller Electric Company a company that's been based here in Jacksonville for 95 years I want to thank Governor DeSantis for coming here to Jacksonville today and visiting with us and and signing this important legislation so if you've read his new book you'll know that the governor spent the summer before he went off to college working as an electrician's Apprentice in his hometown near Tampa so Governor we hope you go all the way but if you ever need something to fall back on we've got a job for you here certainly proof that as we tell our first year apprentices that a career as an electrician can go anywhere so and that's certainly true for the men and women here at Miller Electric Company our business started off as a local electrical contractor almost a century ago my grandfather Buck Autry started here as an apprentice in 1950 and quickly worked his way up to president of the company in 1966. through three generations of leadership we've grown into a national company with more than three thousand employees and approaching 1 billion in annual revenue and I can tell you that wouldn't be possible and we wouldn't be in this position today without the governor's determination to keep our state open to keep our taxes and regulations low and to invest in our Workforce education and that's made Florida the best place in this country to do business and we're fortunate to be based here in the Sunshine State we're proud to be a family operated employee-owned business we take pride in hiring American workers including legal immigrants and giving them an opportunity to have a growing career and a good salary on which they can raise a family and live a fulfilling life we want to know that the people that we are hiring whether native born are born abroad are here legally we are thankful to have e-verify to check the citizenship or immigration status of every person we hire and we are an early adopter of e-verify and we've been doing that on every new employee since 2008. unfortunately many of our competitors here in Florida as we've heard and around the country do not usually verify and end up hiring illegal immigrants these competitors fall into two categories the first have no intention of making illegal hires and just assume that the people are here are here legally others know exactly what they're doing and intentionally hire illegal immigrants to drive down their labor costs to unfairly compete with law-abiding companies like ours and taking jobs from the people that are here legally or even worse they know it's easier to abuse individuals who are too afraid to complain about working conditions as I'm sure the governor remembers from his time as an electrician this can be a dangerous job working in close quarters near high voltage at Miller Electric we care about the safety and well-being of each and every one of our employees and safety is one of our core values thank you Governor DeSantis for signing this legislation today to make e-verify mandatory for all businesses in Florida by doing this you're making working conditions safer for everyone and you are leveling the playing field by making sure all of our competitors are hiring Americans and legal immigrants paying them what they deserve and treating them with respect thank you [Applause] we're going to go sign you guys want to come up here and um okay today is the 10th of May yes nope all right here we go guys [Applause] you guys look so nice in your matching dresses well thanks for everybody that's been a part of this I think that we had some great support in the legislature and and obviously rap Michael did a great job Blaze and the Senate but many of the others who spoke um you know I know representative jocks uh was able to be very powerful and at the end of the day I think uh you know you know Henry made the point you know in Florida you know one business to hire citizens and legal immigrants but we want them to follow the law and not do illegal immigrants and that's not that difficult to do and and once we get that kind of as a as a norm in our society I think we're going to be a lot better off so so this is another great victory for this most recent legislative session uh but stay tuned we got a lot more coming down the pike in the days ahead okay so I've been uh I've been pretty busy I know there's different stuff in the news but we've been busy on uh Monday um sticking it to the CCP so they're not buying land in Florida yesterday we did a yesterday we did the biggest increase and and pay for teachers but we also protected them against mandatory deduction from school unions more money in their paycheck and then today doing this great stuff on illegal immigration so so that's kind of been my focus um I may have something to say about the overall landscape for 24 but uh uh stay tuned on that yes so the issue with the legal immigration system and first of all that's federally controlled that's not anything that the state um you know can do either way but um it's easier to come to this country illegally than it is legally that's why you have people coming across the border from halfway around the world it's not there actually aren't that many Mexican a lot of Central America sometimes but you have people that will fly into Central America or fly into Mexico and then come across the border illegally rather than just coming uh legally so um but here's the thing when you have so much resources that are being sapped because they're processing illegal aliens and they're giving them court dates and all this other stuff I think that's a big waste I think if you come illegally you just get put back across the border you don't have a trial I mean come on how ridiculous is this so you just get that done and then once you do that then you have more resources to be able to say okay if you in Immigration legal immigration nobody has a right to immigrate to this country no Foreigner we determine As Americans what type of immigration system system benefits our country but when you're doing immigration it's not for their benefit as foreigners it's for your benefit As Americans so if there's legal immigration that's harming Americans we shouldn't do that either for example some of these H-1B visas they would fire American Tech workers and hire foreigners at lower wages I don't agree with that I think that's wrong there's other things that are that are value-added so you got to look at how that is but once you determine I think we should have more of a of a point system like Canada or Australia I don't think we should have chain migration Diversity Lottery any of that which is a lot of our immigration here then you then you can do but you got a long way to go to be able to get there but it starts with stopping the Border influx I do think that um with the border that big you need a physical wall you can't just do it with Personnel surveilling there's too many gaps so you do that that wall construct that wall then that'll make it more easy for you to follow the pressure points and repel people from back there and I have offered Biden help if he wants to get serious about this I mean you remember we had the the hurricane come through Southwest Florida it knocked out a bridge to Pine Island it created three holes in the Sanibel Causeway a lot of people thought that was going to take six months we were approached from the state to take over that and and do it and so I said all right we'll do it so I got guys together I said no red tape no bureaucracy no excuses I want those bridges back up and Pine Island Bridge instead of taking six months was repaired in three days and Sanibel was repaired two weeks later and and I raised that just because I am willing to send those Florida folks who who did that I will send them to the southern border and we'll get cranking on that wall if Joe wants to get serious about it so yes well of course they're going to do that because you know what they do they put authorization forms in front of the teachers and they get pressured to sign blanket authorizations they don't know how much is being deducted and then they start deducting from the paycheck and what we're saying is you know that's not appropriate to have automatic deductions if you want to do it you can write a check and hand it to them but what that does that relieves the pressure off the individual teacher or employee they can make more of an informed decision they have a better sense of how much money is actually going and then they can evaluate what is the union actually doing for them and they're really not doing very much they use that money for political uh partisan activities that's what they use it for so why would you want to do that look how much some of the Union uh uh leaders School union leaders make they make a lot more than the teachers make not even close on that so obviously they see that if there's more inform formed a choice that they will probably end up getting less dues into their Kitty and they'll have less of a slush fund to use politically so I get why they would do it but I would just remind people when the going really got tough during covid and we had to make decisions in Florida about are we going to follow the crowd and and deny our kids in education are we going to make sure those schools were open so that kids could be in school five days a week and so parents knew that they had the option to send their kid to in-person energy this is like June of 2020 a long time ago and did the school Union in Florida say you know what we're with you we're standing for the kids we're going to make sure that we're up and running and and we're going to be there for the people that need us no they didn't do that what did they do they sued me to try to close the schools they didn't want the kids in school at all and that was a political decision that was based on partisan politics was not based on the best interests of school children and you look around the country who didn't have the type of determined outlook on this that we did in Florida we had kids locked out of in-person education for over a year and some of the places usually the poor kids you'd have people from like the Chicago teachers unions and we cannot have kids in school too dangerous and then the union member would be found in the Bahamas partying on Instagram you'd see these pictures and you're like man how could you live with yourself knowing those kids are toiling without getting access to education so I I think that it was uh clearly it's going to be good for teachers because if this is something that matters to them they can do it it's not saying you can't but it provides I think more protection for their paychecks and ultimately more take-home pay we're raising the pay anyways with a big 1.05 billion dollar teacher categorical but then on top of that you get even more right so the question is so we had to make on Florida you know if you're if you're on trial for a crime it has to be a unanimous verdict that's how it should be that's how it always is so say you're on trial for first degree murder you're convicted then it's a death penalty case then the jury uh would vote on whether to give the death sentence or not and historically in Florida if eight of the 12 jurors said death you could get Capital our old liberal Supreme Court said that that was somehow unconstitutional uh and so the legislature changed it to say okay you have to do unanimous for the penalty and um the current Supreme Court reversed that and so we were in a situation where the legislature hadn't changed it back you had the Parkland situation where this guy massacres these students and teachers the only appropriate punishment in my judgment would be Capital now it's fine if you don't agree with capital punishment a lot of good people don't but it is the law in Florida and so my view the worst of the worst you have to give that part of it's to deter other people part of it is just uh that's the only appropriate punishment and I think the victims deserve maximum justice but what happened was uh they they fell a juror Too Short on that and the question is is you know were these jurors that were really not inclined to give it under any circumstance and if you have a unanimous you have one juror that can basically nullify what the rest do no question about the guilt yeah the unanimous you got to be unanimous for Guilt so these are guilty people but then the question is going forward uh if you have eight of the twelve that agree with that you know that really should be enough uh to move forward given that some people could get on the jury who really aren't intent on ever doing uh Capital so we did the law uh part of it the Parkland families were really supportive of it now the question is is there may have been I signed the law a couple weeks ago there may be cases where the crime had already been committed the individual had already been charged but they haven't gone through the trial yet so now when you go through the trial is that 8-4 threshold going to apply uh and basically it's just a question of law I think it does because it's a procedural change and usually procedural changes are fine but they'll file motions it'll be litigated and then you'll go from there so my my anticipation was yes it would it would likely apply to to pending cases just because procedural rules do you can't change a substantive rule in the midst of say you committed conduct which clearly isn't Criminal if the legislature then criminalizes it after you committed it they can't go back and say you committed a crime because you didn't at the time uh and so that's a different substance and procedure so I think it's going to work out and it'll be fine I think so I I just started reviewing it yesterday um I think basically it's it's you know you're going to treat a golf a roadworthy golf cart like you would treat an automobile and um that's something that that probably uh makes sense when you're on uh when you're on those those roads I know there have been problems with it so I haven't made a final decision on it but I would say that I'm favorably inclined okay guys thanks so much appreciate it

2023-05-15 13:37

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