Florida has started to pay for plane tickets for certain unauthorized immigrants to self-deport, officials said this week, in what appears to be the first such program run in part by a state.
Unauthorized immigrants who are in custody and have no prior felony convictions may be offered direct commercial flights to return to their home countries as part of the program, which is a collaboration between the Florida Highway Patrol and the U.S. Border Patrol’s Miami sector.
The program is underway in law enforcement stations in West Palm Beach and Dania Beach, south of Fort Lauderdale, Madison Kessler, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, said in a statement. The Border Patrol also confirmed in that the program is in effect.
On Friday, Gov. Ron DeSantis said that unauthorized immigrants could avoid being taken to the state-run detention center in the Florida Everglades named “Alligator Alcatraz” if they chose to self-deport. “We do have options for you to short-circuit that whole process if you’re here illegally,” he said.
Perhaps more than any other state, Florida has sought to aggressively assist the federal government with immigration enforcement. It has required state and county law enforcement to sign formal cooperation agreements with federal authorities and built a state-run immigration detention center under emergency state powers. Mr. DeSantis and James Uthmeier, the state’s attorney general, have threatened local elected officials who have tried to resist.
The Florida self-deportation program is distinct from a federal program that offers unauthorized immigrants a $1,000 stipend and a plane ticket home.
It is unclear when the Florida program began, how many unauthorized immigrants have self-deported under it or how much the state has paid for their flights. Neither the state nor Border Patrol responded to those questions. The Washington Examiner reported that the flights were taking place out of Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
Last week, Mr. DeSantis, a Republican, said that a “couple dozen” people had self-deported under the program.
Nayna Gupta, the policy director for the American Immigration Council in Washington, said that Florida’s “coercive offer of money to a flight to safety” so as to avoid the harsh conditions reported at the Everglades detention center might be pushing noncitizens “to give up their fundamental, constitutional, Fifth Amendment right to due process.”
“There is no clear authority for the State of Florida to interfere in federal immigration enforcement in this manner,” she said.
Florida first said several months ago that it planned to pursue a “voluntary departure program.” Larry Keefe, the executive director of a new state board overseeing immigration enforcement, said late last month that a pilot program — the first of its kind in the nation — had been developed, though details have been scant since.
Florida officials have gone as far as to suggest that the state would arrange its own flights to send deportees out of the state or country to help the Department of Homeland Security, though the federal government has not taken up that offer. The first deportation flights out of the Everglades detention center began last week, operated by Homeland Security.