Florida Senate committee approves memorial urging federal action on southern border

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – A proposed memorial that urges the U.S. Federal Government to secure the southern border and fix the immigration system passed a Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday.

Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, R-Spring Hill, proposed the memorial, SM 598, which passed favorably through a Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday with a 9-1 vote.

“This memorial is to urge the federal government to take swift action, secure our southern border, and to fix our broken legal immigration system,” Ingoglia said.

A memorial is non-binding and is a way for the legislature to formally express their views to the federal government.

“The Federal Government has failed to effectively enforce existing immigration laws, which has led to a surge in the number of unauthorized border crossings along the southern border of the United States,” the memorial states.

On Tuesday, Ingoglia said that as of July 2023, more than seven million people have “evaded our authorities and ignored the process” to legally enter the U.S. since January 2020.

The memorial points to reports from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which reported 183,503 illegal migrant encounters along the southwest border in July 2023, which represents a 357% increase when compared to July 2018.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported 231,529 illegal migrant encounters along the southwest border in October 2023.

Ingoglia said since January 2020, the current system has “emboldened the cartels and created havoc for our nation as a whole.” He said the U.S. has seen an increase of more than 22% fentanyl overdoses and in the last year alone and Florida has seen more than 5,000 of those overdoses.

“The federal government thus far has failed the residents of Florida and the United States by a lack of scrutiny when it comes to immigration enforcement,” Ingoglia said. “This has caused an increase in opportunities for terrorism, human trafficking, drug trafficking, and violent crime.”

The senator said that in a recent published survey, 68% of women and 17% of men experienced sexual abuse on their way into the U.S.

Florida Senate Democratic Leader Lauren Book said she thinks some of the language in the memorial is “inflammatory.”

“I think that we don’t have a place at the table when it comes to immigration,” Book said.

Book said she would vote yes on the memorial Tuesday because she thinks “things need to be done differently than they’ve been done,” but said she would “caution” some of the language in the memorial.

Sen. Geraldine Thompson, D-Orlando, voted against the memorial and pointed to line 54 of the memorial which reads:

“The policies of the Biden Administration at our southern border threaten the very foundation of the American way of life.”

Thompson said the memorial “delineates the Biden administration” and since the memorial is non-binding, she said the federal government has “no obligation to act” based on the outcome of Tuesday’s vote.

“So I think we need to really, really be focusing on some of the very serious issues in the state rather than sending messages or signals to the current administration,” Thompson said.

Ingoglia said, in response to Thompson’s comments, that the U.S. has “had problems with the southern border for decades,” but it has turned into an “actual crisis” within the last three to four years.

“That is directly going to the policies of the Biden administration and what they have done or what they have not done when it comes to this issue,” Ingoglia said.

Ingoglia, addressing the committee in closing, said he doesn’t want anyone to “conflate the actual data that has been portrayed from the memorial to [his] passion on the issue.”

The memorial also urged the secretary of state to dispatch copies to President Joe Biden, the president of the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House Speaker, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary, and each member of the Florida Delegation to the U.S. Congress.

The memorial will now head to the Senate Rules Committee and will then need to be passed by both legislative houses, but the memorial does not require the governor’s approval, nor is it subject to a veto.