It would be tedious to recount in one place all the misstatements made by Gavin Newsom during last night’s debate, but one of the stranger ones was his insisting that “I’m the only guy here who is a border-state governor.” It’s true that California has a land border with Mexico and that Florida does not — and in fact has no land borders with any foreign nation. But it defies reality to claim that Florida isn’t a border state. Just look at a map: As a state surrounded almost entirely by coastline, Florida is 70 miles from the Bahamas and 98 miles from Cuba, and it is as far by sea from Cancún or Jamaica (400 miles) as it is from Texas. From Cuba in particular, migrants have been coming by sea for decades, the Mariel boatlift being the most famous example. The most recently reported such incident occurred on Wednesday.

Florida is hardly shielded from migrant-trafficking. From Teddy Grant and Quinn Owen of ABC News in January:

U.S. officials in South Florida have seen a 400% increase in migrant encounters this fiscal year compared to the same period last year, Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz said Wednesday. “In the past five days, interagency efforts in the Miami Sector led to discovering 26 smuggling events, totaling nearly 600 migrants,” Ortiz said in a Tweet. “Since October 1, 2022, Miami Sector has seen a 400% increase in migrant encounters over the same time period last year.” The update comes as the area has seen an influx of migrant landings or attempted landings near Florida in recent days. Dry Tortugas National Park in the Florida Keys announced Monday it would close to the public after an increase in migrant landings over the past few days shut down operations at the park there.

Border Patrol operates 20 sectors based in twelve states and Puerto Rico. As the agency’s own website explains regarding the Miami sector:

The Miami Sector (MIP) as we know it today was established in 1940 and consists of approximately 187,000 square miles and has 1,279 miles of coastal border (Florida only) along the Atlantic and Gulf shores of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina (1,776 miles of Coastal Border in the official area of responsibility (AOR). While the Miami Border Patrol Sector’s AOR includes Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina, the sector’s primary area of operation takes place in the state of Florida, excluding the Florida Panhandle west of the Apalachicola River, which covers 42,464 square miles. There are six Border Patrol Stations located within the AOR of MIP. These stations are strategically located and staffed to address the current threat within the State of Florida only. . . . Stations of the Miami Sector are located in Dania Beach, Jacksonville, Marathon, Orlando, Tampa and West Palm Beach.

A Border Patrol video from 2020 illustrates the work of the Marathon station: “We are located in a unique position to respond to threats from the Bahamas, the Yucatán Peninsula, and Cuba, which is just 90 miles away.”