Florida’s Governor is griping about the Department of Homeland Security looking to “poach” local and state law enforcement for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“Sheriffs losing deputies who are in this fight to just wear a different jersey, basically, but still be in the fight, that doesn’t necessarily add to what we’re doing. It’s just moving someone over,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said Friday.
However, there are salient material reasons why someone would put on a “different jersey,” given the sweet deal D.C. is dangling in front of current cops.
ICE is offering benefits that can’t be matched locally, in what it calls a “robust package of federal law enforcement incentives, including a “maximum $50,000 signing bonus.” Depending on how hiring progresses, it could exacerbate long-term shortages in law enforcement agencies.
Enhanced retirement benefits, student loan forgiveness, 25% Law Enforcement Availability Pay (LEAP) for HSI Special Agents, and “Administratively Uncontrollable Overtime (AUI) for Enforcement Removal Operations (ERO) Deportation Officers” are among the incentives.
The Governor hopes sheriffs stand up against this poaching attempt.
“I know when that letter hit, I heard a lot of static coming out of our sheriffs’ departments about that. And I told them, I said, listen, you know, you guys got to defend your agencies and your people. I mean, you say, fight for what you think is right. I mean, this isn’t my policy. It’s coming down from ICE,” DeSantis said.
The feds note that “significant new funding through the recently signed One Big Beautiful Bill” facilitates these “benefits to attract the next generation of law enforcement professionals to find, arrest, and remove criminal illegal aliens.”
But DeSantis doesn’t know why that next generation needs to come from local and state ranks.
Recruitment letters went to “a lot of people that are 287G qualified that are working in local agencies in Florida and even some state agencies and are dangling like a lot of bonus money and all this other stuff.”
“And I know some sheriffs have had concerns, you know, that that’s happening. It’s like, hey, we’ve been doing all this stuff to help you guys, and now you’re trying to poach our people who are already in the fight. Why not recruit additional people to be supplementing that instead of just kind of displacing?”
Cops aren’t the only recruitment target. ICE is also making the play in major cities, at college campuses, and at job fairs, so additional people are being recruited.
The Governor made the comments at a Florida Highway Patrol Headquarters in Orlando.
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