The Florida Supreme Court on Wednesday approved Gov. Ron DeSantis' request to impanel a grand jury to investigate human smuggling in Florida.
The court was unanimous in its approval of the governor’s request, according to CBS News. The grand jury will be in place for a year, serving in the 10th Judicial Circuit, which includes, Highlands, Hardee, and Polk counties. The circuit’s chief judge, Ellen Masters, will preside over the grand jury.
“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,” DeSantis said in a tweet Thursday. “We are united in fighting back against Biden’s border crisis and protecting Floridians.”
Florida is one of several states dealing with human smuggling.
“Human smuggling is the precursor of human trafficking,” Texas Public Policy Foundation Policy Scholar, Selene Rodriguez, told the Austin Journal. “People who conspire with human smugglers to illegally enter the United States typically incur thousands of dollars of debt to make the trip. After entering the country illegally, these 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.”
According to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection website, during the past year of President Joe Biden’s presidency, 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.
Human smuggling is big business for Mexican cartels, which reportedly can make up to $14 million a day smuggling people into the United States, according to a Fox News report.
Roy Villareal, a retired Tucson, Arizona, border patrol chief, told the network that many people become “slaves” to pay their way to get to America.
Villareal also said that many migrants put up their life savings and become little more than indentured servants forced to work off debts they incur to make the trip. Ohers are forced to be drug mules; he said.
Mexican cartels are turning immigration and human trafficking into a money-making operation as they shift their focus away from stolen oil and drugs, according to Reuters.
