Gov. Ron DeSantis has spent at least $15.2 million in the first half of the year to address “illegal migration,” tapping a $500 million state fund that was made available to him to use for emergencies, records show.
The cost of DeSantis’ immigration efforts is not fully known, but records obtained by the Herald/Times give a snapshot of how the Republican governor has been using state resources this year to respond to an issue that has been central to his presidential campaign.
Since January, DeSantis has spent $4.5 million to support the Florida National Guard’s response to a state of emergency DeSantis declared in Florida “due to the mass migration of unauthorized aliens” and $10.7 million to respond to a separate state of emergency he declared back in 2021 to “protect Floridians against the dangerous impacts of the Biden Border Crisis.”
