When Florida deploys hundreds of state guard to Texas, we'll need troops from other states

Dear Blue State governors:

I come to you as an upstanding citizen of the state of Florida, a resident here for the past 39 years.

We Floridians need your help. Allow me to explain:

In case you haven’t heard, our governor, Ron DeSantis, bless his heart, has announced that Florida will dispatch a battalion of armed personnel and equipment to Texas to protect the Florida border there.

No need to look at your maps. I can save you some time. There is no Florida-Texas Southern border. But during election season imaginations can run wild.

“We stand with Texas as they work to repel illegal aliens at the border,” Florida’s Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie said. “We are prepared to assist however needed.”

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Up until now, it was an unstated imperative that state officials dealing with emergency management were devoted to managing emergencies in Florida, not other states.

Nobody’s needing or calling for Florida’s help in Texas. The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol serves as the primary agency for dealing with undocumented border crossers and asylum seekers in Texas and elsewhere.

And there are already some 1,400 Border Patrol agents assigned to Texas’ border counties. Over the years, Congress has generously funded them with sophisticated surveillance equipment, such as automatic surveillance towers, thermo-sensor drone cameras and x-ray scanners with facial-biometrical recognition to find and detain unregistered migrants crossing the border.

The state of Texas has joined the effort with its Operation Lone Star, a recently created task force of state assets to assist the federal government in border enforcement there.

So, it’s best to think of the decision by Generalisimo DeSantis to self-invite a quasi-military force from Florida to a distant state as little more than political performance art.

And you can bet that its inevitable “mission accomplished” results will be measured in the fresh video collected for campaign ads, not any real problem solving.

But all this contrived mischief has consequences. This is where you Blue State governors can help out.

Help Florida make up for law enforcement officers sent to Texas

The campaign offensive will take 800 Florida National Guard soldiers away from us here in Florida. It will also ship out 200 Florida Department of Law Enforcement officers, five state aircraft, 10 boats, two mobile command vehicles and 17 drones.

And the list goes on …

We’re even sending 101 Florida Highway Patrol troopers to Texas, even though (you might want to fact-check me on this) there are zero Florida highways in Texas for them to patrol.

Is the aim to scare the migrants away from Texas with a click-it-or-ticket seat belt campaign? Or will the FHP be dispatched to Texas highways to demonstrate how the proper deployment of orange barrels, and dead-end traffic lanes can stall any migration?

The problem is that Florida is one of the leading states when it comes to numbers of fatal automobile crashes. And there’s a staffing shortage at the FHP as it is. So, we can’t afford to lose so many of them for this distant folly.

I think you see where this is headed: We’re going to need help from other states.

Speedy response is needed to make Florida highways, swamps safe

So, can you governors in states like New York, California, Illinois, Washington, and Massachusetts, please consider sending some of your highway patrol troopers to Florida to help us patrol our deadly highways while our FHP officers are on their Texas adventure?

And while you’re at it, we’re going to need some more of your personnel to help staff our Fish and Wildlife offices here in the state. That’s because Florida’s invasion force to Texas also will include 20 Florida Fish and Wildlife officers.

Go figure. While I applaud any effort that addresses the taking of undersized speckled trout in the Rio Grande, these Florida wildlife officers would be better deployed finding those 16-foot Burmese pythons breeding like crazy in the Everglades.

You send us some officers, and we’ll teach them to find and catch the giant snakes before they overrun all of South Florida.

We’re also going to need hundreds of your state national guard soldiers. As I mentioned, Florida is sending 800 of ours to Texas.

Florida National Guard needed for riot response in Florida

This is no time for Florida to give away its riot-defense force.

Florida is home to more traitorous insurrectionists than any other state, according to the charges filed from the failed coup at The Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. And their coup leader living in exile in Mar-a-Lago is perhaps one indictment away from summoning them to the streets for a second try at democracy-toppling violence.

The real danger to Florida isn’t hard-working, docile Central Americans looking for a better life, and coming here to file legal asylum claims, but malignant, homegrown militias looking to impose martial law over the rule of law.

So, until we get our own national guard soldiers back from Texas, please consider loaning us some of yours to protect the millions of sane Floridians who still live here and would like it to be a democracy run by responsible adults again.

Frank Cerabino is a columnist at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at fcerabino@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Florida needs help after DeSantis deploys state troops to Texas