DeSantis’ blows against immigrant children aren’t just rhetoric; it’s who he is

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, leader of a state heavily dependent on the labor of immigrants and dotted from one end of the peninsula to the other with their success stories, is hell-bent on vilifying us.

Worst of all, DeSantis has chosen to make the target of his wrath — and his power — the most vulnerable of new immigrants coming to this country: unaccompanied minor children, who, whether the governor likes it or not, might end up living the rest of their lives as Americans.

And voting one day, like me and millions of other immigrants.

What kind of Americans will newcomers make with constant, hateful rhetoric rolled out from the top as a welcome mat?

A father of three, DeSantis is so obsessed with keeping new immigrants — legally requesting asylum at the border — out of the state that he has tasked the state agency responsible for keeping children safe in Florida, the Department of Children and Families (DCF), with taking a political stance.

This shouldn’t be the agency’s role, child advocates say, and they’re right.

Yet, the micromanaging governor has mandated that DCF take on the ugly job of issuing a regulation that cracks down on shelters housing unaccompanied minor children. The point is to make it really hard for people of goodwill to care for these children.

And so, the spineless people running DCF have proposed a way to deny licenses to shelters by requiring that there be a resettlement agreement between the state and the federal governments for them to operate.

The rule would apply not only to shelters but also to foster agencies and family foster homes that house unaccompanied migrant children for the federal government.

These actions against immigrant children have especially angered former Pedro Pan children brought from Cuba in the 1960s, housed and resettled in similar ways by the Catholic Church.

Yes, DeSantis’ dog-and-pony show this month in Miami with a few Pedro Pans who support him didn’t work out so well. I’ve heard from many Cuban Americans, particularly Pedro Pans, disgusted by his racist crackdown on largely Latin American children and a longtime protector of immigrants, Archbishop Thomas Wenski.

The governor’s political motivation is so transparent.

Part of his full-throttle, anti-immigration agenda includes bills making the rounds in the Legislature that would prohibit state government from contracting with transportation companies that legally bring migrants into Florida for the federal government.

Again, there’s no illegality involved in transportation services when immigrants are registered with the federal government and awaiting the processing of their cases.

So why should DeSantis’ balderdash matter?

Not only because he’s harming children, which the American Academy of Pediatrics has denounced.

But also because it has become more than just reelection campaign rhetoric.

It says volumes about who he is as a human being — cruel, small, malicious. If you can’t be moved by a child’s plight, if you’re so insecure you need to crush a down-and-out child’s future, then by what?

DeSantis has exhibited such divisive traits for years, although his racism has, most of the time, been cast with some degree of subtlety with dog-whistle language and images of white majorities and token Blacks and Hispanics.

From the day in 2018 when I saw then-Congressman DeSantis using his adorable small children playing with toy blocks in a campaign video, a nod to Donald Trump’s infamous border wall, I felt gut-punch repulsion.

There he was, indoctrinating his innocent children — and he and his lovely wife so proud of it.

As a journalist, I’m accustomed to politicians’ low blows, especially during a heated political contest like the governorship. But this was a mom’s repulsion — and here’s that feeling again, now permanently embedded, as Florida’s governor continues his gratuitous, Machiavellian crackdown on immigrant children being housed in Florida shelters.

The short-sighted view of immigration policy of politicians like DeSantis will have long-term consequences for the well-being of this immigrant-made nation.

They sow hate among groups and divide the population.

Many of the unaccompanied minors in this country will qualify for asylum under this country’s laws. They will eventually become residents, citizens and voting Americans.

Like it or not, GOP senators, members of Congress and governors like DeSantis, momentarily demonizing immigrant children for political gain, are hurting the fabric of which a future America will be made.

Their words today are grooming the Americans of tomorrow.

Where they could be fueling love and gratitude, they’re instead ingraining disgust and mistrust.

No, DeSantis’ anti-immigrant blows can’t be dismissed as just a reelection campaign tactic or part of his ambitious plan to follow the Trump map to the White House.

The fixation on acting against immigrant children, coupled with the DeSantis and GOP-endorsed measures making their way in the Legislature to silence gay children in schools, ought to give Floridians pause.

This is who he is: a dad who doesn’t think about other parents who aren’t like him — or about their children.

That fact should worry people more than any new immigrant resettling in a state that desperately needs their labor and energy.

Fabiola Santiago is a columnist for the Miami Herald.