TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — (AP) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is calling state lawmakers into a special session to help carry out President-elect Donald Trump's promises for a swift crackdown on immigration. But he's facing pushback from the legislature's Republican leaders, who have pledged their support for the incoming president but said a special session would be "premature" and "irresponsible."
Trump is preparing more than 100 executive orders starting Day One of the new White House administration, in what amounts to a shock-and-awe campaign on border security, deportations and a rush of other policy priorities.
While Trump and his advisers have pledged mass deportations, many questions remain about how they would deport anywhere close to the 11 million people estimated to be in the country illegally.
DeSantis announced Monday he's scheduling the special session for the week of Jan. 27, the week after Trump is sworn in, so that state lawmakers will be poised to help implement the incoming president's policies immediately.
“State and local officials in Florida must help the Trump administration enforce our nation’s immigration laws,” DeSantis said. “In order to do that effectively, we are going to need legislation to impose additional duties on local officials and provide funding for those local officials.”
The Republican governor said he's prepared to suspend elected officials from office if they are "neglecting their duties" under the new immigration mandates. DeSantis has removed multiple officials from office, including two state attorneys, arguing they were failing to prosecute certain crimes.
DeSantis said he anticipates allocating tens of millions of dollars in new funding to help state and local officials expand their enforcement and detention efforts and said he would consider activating the Florida National Guard and the Florida State Guard to carry out in-state enforcement measures.
“There also needs to be measures to hold people accountable who are violating our anti-sanctuary policies,” he said. “Florida needs to make sure that we don’t have any lingering incentives for people to come into our state illegally.”
In a strongly-worded joint statement released Monday afternoon, Senate President Ben Albritton and House Speaker Danny Perez said that without any specific guidance from the incoming administration and only “fragments of ideas” from the governor, it's too soon for lawmakers to hold a special session.
“It is completely irresponsible to get out ahead of any announcements President Trump will make, especially when uninformed or ill-timed state action could potentially impair or impede the success of President Trump’s forthcoming efforts to end illegal immigration,” the Republican leaders said.
While the governor can call a special session, Albritton and Perez said that "the Legislature, not the Governor, will decide when and what legislation we consider."
It's a striking show of independence from Republican leadership in the state, where lawmakers in previous years worked in lockstep to help advance DeSantis' agenda as he ran for the Republican presidential nomination.
Florida House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell told the AP she doesn't see a reason for holding a special session instead of addressing the issues during the regular legislative session, which begins March 4.
“During special session, there’s restricted ability for the public and stakeholders to have input, and this is a really big issue," Driskell said.
DeSantis is also calling on Florida lawmakers to pass hurricane relief and work on reforms for the state's condominium market, which has seen rising prices following a safety law passed by state lawmakers in 2022 in the wake of the Surfside condominium building collapse, which killed 98 people in June 2021. The governor also wants legislators to overhaul Florida's citizen ballot initiative process for proposing constitutional amendments, after alleging fraud in the petition drive that got a measure on the 2024 ballot that would have expanded abortion rights.
The Senate President and House Speaker pledged to take up the issues during the upcoming regular session.
Nikki Fried, chair of the Florida Democratic Party, criticized the governor for not calling for steps to address the state's stormy property insurance market or rising cost of living, saying the Republican Party prefers to “play politics instead of solving problems.”
In other states, Democratic governors are mounting a resistance movement against the incoming Trump administration, looking for ways to shield their states from potential federal policies restricting abortion and transgender rights, among other things. Some prominent Democratic governors, meanwhile, have taken a more conciliatory approach in an effort to forge a working relationship with the new administration.
___ Associated Press writer Stephany Matat in West Palm Beach, Florida, contributed to this report. Kate Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.