DeSantis plans to fund border wall by levying foreign worker remittances to their home countries
Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis touted his border control bona fides as the leader of a maritime state, telling Fox News how he plans to levy foreign workers' remittances to fund a border wall.
DeSantis explained on "Life, Liberty & Levin" that the illegal immigration, smuggling and trafficking crises under President Biden have turned every state into a border state, but that Florida is one of few to take swift and high-profile actions.
He told host Mark Levin that he has since composed a human smuggling task force and acted to help assuage the illegal immigration crisis by flying migrants to jurisdictions that had previously pledged to be "sanctuaries" for them.
In a DeSantis administration, sanctuary cities would be banned, he said, and that programs like "E-Verify" – which verifies an employee's legal residency or citizenship status – would be required.
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DeSantis stated that as a leader of a maritime state, he has also had to face the issue on the water, as Texas faces it on land – saying his government has helped the U.S. Coast Guard interdict boats and also deport illegal immigrants arriving onshore back to places like Haiti.
DeSantis pledged to continue building a border wall, and to reinstate the Trump-era "Remain in Mexico" policy for migrants hoping to be allowed into the United States, floating a unique way to fund such a wall.
He floated the prospect of instituting a fee similar to one Pennsylvania Republicans previously proposed that would have placed a levy on international remittances to help state taxpayers.
In 2022, Pennsylvania State Sen. Doug Mastriano, R-Chambersburg, drafted a bill, SB 1158, that would have levied undocumented immigrant remittances to benefit the state's property tax and rent relief fund.
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In speaking to Fox News Digital at the time he drafted the legislation, Mastriano estimated more than $70 billion had been diverted from the U.S. economy annually through such remittances.
"Once settled in a new state, illegal immigrants primarily use a money transfer agent such as Western Union to send earnings back to their home nations," he said at the time.
DeSantis told Levin he would craft such a policy to fund the border wall.
"We will build a border wall, and we'll finance that by charging fees on remittances that workers send to foreign countries -- that'll raise billions of dollars," DeSantis said of his plan.
"But we have to deport people who are here illegally. And we haven't seen that in many administrations [at] nearly adequate levels. So we are going to do that. And then once people know that, that the law is going to be enforced, they're much less likely to try to come illegally to begin with."
DeSantis also spoke of plans to treat Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, pointing to the criminality and drug trafficking that is reaching beyond Mexico and into the United States.
"The thing about it is, [people] will buy some pill thinking it's something else that happens to be laced with fentanyl. And that's enough right there to kill somebody."