Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican presidential candidate who has made immigration a major theme in his campaign, is doubling down on the idea that Republicans need to come together and take border security into their own hands.
At an event in Arizona on Wednesday, DeSantis listed all the hard-line immigration policies he has championed in Florida to preface that he has “the will” to work with like-minded Republican governors and sheriffs to respond to issues at the southern border. “There is no reason why we can’t be working with Texas or why we can’t work with Arizona, at the local level or at the state level,” said DeSantis, whose event in Sierra Vista, Arizona, marked his first visit to the U.S.-Mexico border as a presidential candidate.
Without providing much detail, DeSantis said that there will be an announcement in the coming days that will show how he plans to formalize the multi-state partnership. The effort, he said, is a rebuke of President Joe Biden’s border policies. “We have the will in states like Florida… but you may not have the will in Washington, D.C. So we got to work together to try to overcome that,” DeSantis said.
DeSantis was joined by Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody and Republican law enforcement officers from Florida, Texas and Arizona, including Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels, who has advocated for taking border security in defiance of the federal government. Dannels, for example, supported an effort by former Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey last year that involved spending $82 million to build a makeshift wall with shipping containers along the border with Mexico. The Biden administration said the governor had no authority to unilaterally reshape federally managed public lands.
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