After receiving the green light from the Florida Supreme Court earlier this week, Gov. Ron DeSantis is impaneling a grand jury to investigate human smuggling in Florida, an effort intended to promote homeland security.
CBS Miami reported that the Florida Supreme Court unanimously approved the governor’s plan to form a grand jury to examine human smuggling and trafficking as well as the impact of the border crisis on the Sunshine State.
DeSantis lauded the decision in a post on Twitter.
“I am glad that the Florida Supreme Court has granted my petition to impanel a statewide grand jury to investigate international human smuggling networks that operate on our southern border,” the governor said in the post. “We are united in fighting back against Biden’s border crisis and protecting Floridians.”
The grand jury will be in place for a year, serving in the 10th Judicial Circuit, which includes Highlands, Hardee and Polk counties, the CBS report said. Judge Ellen Masters, the circuit's chief judge, will be on the bench for the grand jury.
DeSantis told Fox News the grand jury is essential to “examine international human smuggling networks that bring illegal aliens across the southern border and ultimately to states like Florida."
Florida Lt. Gov. Jeanette Núñez is on board with the plan and told Fox News that efforts that will include a grand jury seated to look at the issue will help the state “take the next step investigating the criminal enterprises that are taking hold and child trafficking, human smuggling, drug smuggling.”
During the past year of the Biden administration, the U.S. Border Patrol had 1,536,899 land border encounters along the southern border, up more than 200% since the end of the Trump administration in 2020, data from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection website said.
The issue of human smuggling extends beyond Florida’s borders, which Texas Public Policy Foundation policy scholar Selene Rodriguez told the Austin Journal is just the first step in the chain of human trafficking.
“Human smuggling is the precursor of human trafficking,” Rodriguez told the Journal. “People who conspire with human smugglers to illegally enter the United States typically incur in thousands of dollars of debt to make the trip. After entering the country illegally, these same people are often forced to pay off that debt through forced labor and sexual exploitation, which is the essence of the modern-day slavery that is human trafficking.”
