The mission was a tightly held secret as two agents from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement traveled to a remote Texas town, hundreds of miles away on the U.S.-Mexico border.
They worked for a statewide police agency charged with protecting the governor and investigating major crimes. But last summer, they were enlisted in a highly unusual effort: laying the groundwork for a politically charged operation — ordered by Gov. Ron DeSantis — to fly border-crossers from San Antonio to the liberal haven of Martha’s Vineyard.
“Tomorrow we meet FDLE at 0900 and have a full day on the schedule,” wrote Perla Huerta, a former Army counterintelligence officer working with the FDLE agents, in a text message released by the governor’s office; migrants later said they were lured onto the flights with false promises by Huerta, who has not commented on the claims or her work for a private contractor involved in the operation.
The statewide police force’s on-the-ground involvement in planning the Sept. 14 flights speaks to how DeSantis has increasingly deployed FDLE outside its traditional portfolio and in support of his own political agenda, according to a Washington Post review of court documents, state records and interviews with more than a dozen current and former administrators and agents, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fear of retribution.
FDLE members surveilled buses traveling through Florida with unaccompanied migrant children as the governor bashed President Biden’s immigration policies. They rounded up felons alleged to have voted illegally as DeSantis touted a new election crimes office popular with the right wing. And they were asked to scrutinize the crime-fighting record of a Democratic prosecutor who had repeatedly clashed with the governor.
Inside FDLE, many members balked at these directives from the governor’s office, which they viewed as political stunts orchestrated to raise DeSantis’s national profile, The Post’s interviews found, and some who openly resisted the governor’s priorities were pushed out. Several former top officials spoke on the record with The Post for the first time regarding their concerns about executive overreach into law enforcement — which they said escalated after DeSantis installed a new FDLE chief last spring.
“For me it was a stain on the agency when it got involved in this even though there is no large-scale election fraud,” said former FDLE bureau chief Louis Sloan, who retired two years earlier than planned because of the voter arrests and turnover inside the agency. “We’re enforcing someone’s political agenda — the governor’s.”
DeSantis, a likely presidential contender in 2024, has built a reputation as a culture warrior in the GOP by weaponizing state government against school districts that required masks, companies that balked at his education policies and private venues that hosted drag performances.
But the former FDLE officials say that the governor is taking a particularly dangerous risk by politicizing a statewide police force with a $300 million budget, almost 2,000 employees and the broad power to launch criminal investigations and make arrests. FDLE is responsible for investigating major violent, drug, economic and computer crimes and public corruption — including potential complaints about the governor’s office.
“FDLE is more politically directed and controlled by the governor than in its 50 years of existence,” said Jim Madden, who retired as an FDLE assistant commissioner in 2014 after 24 years with the agency. “If citizens can’t rely on an independent, nonpolitical statewide police agency, it’s one of the worst things that can happen.”
The governor’s office did not respond to a detailed list of questions from The Post about his oversight of FDLE. Deputy press secretary Jeremy Redfern instead pointed to a recent report from a statewide grand jury, impaneled at DeSantis’s request and overseen by the statewide prosecutor under Republican Attorney General Ashley Moody, that blasted the Biden administration’s treatment of unaccompanied minors who cross the border and its failure to properly vet all caregivers who take them in.
“The Biden Administration is failing to secure our nation’s borders, and Governor DeSantis will continue to fight back,” Redfern said.
Court documents show the governor tapped FDLE last year to serve as the lead investigator for the grand jury’s work, which would later fuel his talking points on illegal immigration. The agency declined to comment on its role. In response to The Post’s questions about the governor’s influence, the agency said in a statement that it “serves the public” and its “mission has not changed.”
DeSantis has suggested that FDLE should report exclusively to him, though the Florida constitution gives shared oversight to the governor and Cabinet. He’s consolidated power under a 2022 law that allowed him to swiftly anoint new FDLE leadership, while also significantly cutting down on the Cabinet meetings meant to provide oversight of the agency.
DeSantis has cited founding father Alexander Hamilton as his inspiration.
“He would not have liked the fact that you have a Cabinet system of government where the executive power is splintered in certain areas,” DeSantis said during a news conference last year. “For example, FDLE. The head of that agency is all four Cabinet members acting together. There is not actually one person who is accountable for FDLE.”
“Hamilton hated that,” he continued. “He thought there had to be one person that was accountable, one person that could make the decisions and you would have a very clear chain of command.”
FDLE was established more than a half century ago “to promote public safety and strengthen domestic security” in the state, according to its mission statement.
Florida’s Constitution sought to keep gubernatorial power over the agency in check by having FDLE report to both the governor and Cabinet, which includes the state’s elected chief financial officer, attorney general and agriculture commissioner. That arrangement didn’t always prevent political conflicts, however.
DeSantis’s Republican predecessor, Rick Scott, pushed out FDLE commissioner Gerald Bailey in 2014 after Bailey defied what he viewed as overtly political demands, including for a voter fraud probe. News organizations sued Scott and the Cabinet, alleging that they had violated open meetings laws by discussing Bailey’s replacement through their aides. A court later ordered state officials to be more transparent when hiring an FDLE chief. Scott declined to comment on the matter.
Bailey’s successor, Rick Swearingen, sought to dispel any perception that he was “the governor’s boy,” vowing, “If I’m asked to do anything illegal, unethical or immoral, I can walk away tomorrow.” In 2018, when Scott again demanded that FDLE investigate voting fraud amid a recount in his Senate race, a spokesman for the agency said it could not launch a probe without referrals from election officials.
The balance of power changed last March, under a new law allowing a majority of the three-member Cabinet to approve the governor’s pick for FDLE chief instead of requiring a unanimous vote. Republican lawmakers said the change was overdue since 2003, when the Cabinet shrank from six to three members. The lone Democrat on the Cabinet at the time, Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, denounced the legislation as a “power grab.”
Bailey told The Post he didn’t agree with the change. “It means less independence for the agency and more allegiance to a single politician,” said Bailey, who has worked as a law enforcement consultant since he left state government.
Swearingen, who had faced mounting pressure under DeSantis to be more aggressive on immigration and election fraud, abruptly resigned without explanation soon after the new law was signed.
“Now we’re in a situation where we have an opportunity to focus on some other issues,” DeSantis said in March 2022 after Swearingen announced his retirement. Swearingen declined to comment to The Post and has never spoken publicly about his departure.
At the next Cabinet meeting in August, it took less than a minute for DeSantis to install a new FDLE chief.
DeSantis nominated Mark Glass, the director of the Capitol Police, who had served as the interim commissioner since May. Five years earlier, Glass was transferred out of his job as an FDLE director into a new role with reduced pay, according to his personnel file, which classified the move as a demotion. The file, which The Post obtained, includes a request from Glass at that time to be reassigned “due to my current family needs.” FDLE pointed to Glass’s positive job reviews and did not make him available for an interview.
Although the settlement from Bailey’s ouster requires FDLE appointees to undergo a public interview, none of the Cabinet members asked Glass any questions about his background or vision for the agency, according to video of the August 2022 Cabinet meeting on a state website. His nomination was immediately seconded by the chief financial officer, Republican Jimmy Patronis. “He has a lot of ideas for the agency, ready to serve in this capacity so I would second that as well,” added Moody, the attorney general.
“Good call,” DeSantis quickly responded. “Okay. Congratulations Commissioner Glass.”
Fried was silent. The governor never called for a vote.
Fried, who now serves at chairwoman of the Florida Democratic Party after an unsuccessful gubernatorial bid, said she wasn’t opposed to Glass personally but criticized a process she said reflected DeSantis’s unilateral approach to governing. Though Glass still reports to the Cabinet, DeSantis has drastically reduced the frequency of its meetings.
Since 2020, the Cabinet has met only 12 times — a stark contrast to Scott’s two terms, when it met an average of more than once per month, public records show.
“His style is to govern alone,” Fried said. “He doesn’t want input, particularly dissent.”
DeSantis, Moody and Patronis did not respond to questions about Glass’s hiring process and the decline in Cabinet meetings.
Trump’s false claims that voter fraud led to his 2020 defeat — despite carrying Florida by a three-point margin — had placed DeSantis in a politically awkward spot. The governor rebuffed calls for a costly, Arizona-style audit as he and other Republican leaders cast the state’s election as a national model.
But as “election integrity” became a leading talking point on the right, DeSantis launched a voting fraud unit last year in which FDLE would play a key role.
Republican lawmakers passed a bill in 2022 creating the unit and allowing the governor to help the FDLE chief choose agents to investigate voting crimes. Under Swearingen, FDLE pushed back on the plan, arguing that there was insufficient fraud for several full-time agents. Lawmakers adjusted the bill’s language to allow those assigned to the election unit to work on other issues.
“It’s like they were in search of a problem,” said Cynthia Sanz, who retired as an FDLE assistant commissioner in 2014 but keeps tabs on the agency where she worked for three decades. “I never saw any indication of widespread organized election fraud or voting fraud. ”
In Glass, DeSantis found a publicly supportive partner. Glass stood by his side in August when he announced the statewide sweep of 20 felons who had allegedly voted illegally in 2020. “I want to thank Governor DeSantis for his commitment to making sure Florida is a national leader when it comes to having secure elections,” Glass said.
Although a constitutional amendment approved by Florida voters in 2018 made it easier for felons to regain voting rights after completing their prison sentences, the change did not apply to people convicted of murder or felony sex offenses. Police body-camera footage first obtained by the Tampa Bay Times and the Guardian shows FDLE agents gently explaining to several bewildered Miami-Dade and Tampa-area residents that they were being arrested for voter fraud because they were ineligible under the amendment.
“Oh my God!” says one 55-year-old Tampa woman as she puts her hands behind her back to be handcuffed.
“I know you’re caught off guard. I understand,” says one male agent.
“I voted but I didn’t commit no fraud!” the woman responds.
Several people working at FDLE as well as former agency officials told The Post they cringed at the scenes of mostly Black people being arrested by contrite agents. Two men were pulled from their homes in their underwear.
“It’s hard to see an FDLE agent apologizing for making an arrest,” Bailey said. “An agent of that caliber of law enforcement agency should be proud of any arrest they make.”
Attorney Jason Blank, who is representing one of the voters arrested in the sweep, said the state faces an uphill battle to prove that his client and other defendants willingly and knowingly broke the law, since election officials had approved their applications and mailed them registration cards. Six of the 20 cases have been dismissed, so far. Five other defendants accepted plea deals that resulted in no jail time. Only one case has gone to trial, resulting in a split verdict; the defendant was sentenced to two years probation.
“There’s no doubt that governor weaponized FDLE to effectuate his political motives,” Blank said. “These are people who simply want to exercise the foremost right of every American citizen.”
Sloan, the FDLE supervisor who retired early, is Black, and he said the televised footage of the arrests made him think about what his parents and grandparents had endured to vote, particularly his grandfather who had been active in the NAACP. Sloan is a registered Democrat but said he had no problem working under Republican governors in the past.
As agency leaders he respected were pushed out, Sloan decided to retire at the age of 60, even though it diminished his retirement savings.
“The politicization of government is concerning,” he said. “I loved serving the people of Florida, but it’s been tainted.”
In the summer of 2021, as apprehensions at the southern border surged, DeSantis seized on the issue that once helped propel Trump to the White House.
He staked claim to being the first governor to respond to a request for assistance from the governors of Texas and Arizona, dispatching 50 officers from FDLE and two other state agencies to the border to back up Texas patrols. DeSantis trumpeted the effort at a July 2021 news conference in Del Rio, Texas, claiming that most of the border crossers at that juncture were headed to Florida. Democrats blasted the governor for diverting law enforcement officers away from the state they are supposed to protect.
As DeSantis lashed out at the Biden administration’s border security policies, he saw opportunities for FDLE to crack down on illegal immigration. In September 2021, the governor signed a sweeping executive order directing FDLE to collect detailed information on migrants transferred to Florida by the federal government and encouraging officers to pull over vehicles suspected of transporting migrants.
At a news conference several weeks later, the governor accused the Biden administration of “dumping” dozens of planeloads of illegal immigrants in Jacksonville in the past several months. He suggested they were a threat to public safety, pointing to a Honduran migrant who had posed as a minor and was charged that day with stabbing a Jacksonville man to death. “This is not the way you keep people safe,” DeSantis said of the flights. “It’s reckless and it’s wrong.”
The flights largely carried unaccompanied minors later transported to sponsors or government-approved shelters. Federal law requires these unaccompanied minors to be transferred to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services within 72 hours, except in exceptional circumstances.
Under Swearingen, tension between the governor’s office and FDLE peaked as the agency was directed to photograph migrants boarding the buses in Jacksonville and follow them to their destinations. FDLE members raised concerns about whether they were violating the civil liberties of the migrants, who were not criminal suspects, The Post’s interviews found.
In a statement to The Post, FDLE said the federal government did not respond to its requests for information about the flights and who was on them. Referring to the Honduran immigrant who later pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, FDLE said: “The failure of the federal government to report transporting unaccompanied children and undocumented migrants into Florida posed a potential — and in at least one case a lethal — threat to Florida’s citizens and visitors.”
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said it does not identify unaccompanied children under its care to protect their privacy and security. The agency declined to comment on how the Honduran migrant got to Florida.
By the spring of 2022, Swearingen was out and Glass had taken over. DeSantis secured $12 million in the state budget for migrant relocation and designated FDLE as the lead investigator for the grand jury, which was impaneled to look into smuggling and trafficking. And in August, FDLE agents joined the surveillance team that traveled to the border town of Del Rio, Tex.
The group included Larry Keefe, the governor’s public safety adviser, James Montgomerie of Vertol Systems, an aviation firm that records show later received more than $1.5 million from the migrant relocation program, and Huerta, who was working for Vertol Systems, according to the texts released by the governor’s office. They surveyed an airport and warehouses and discussed the number of people crossing the border, as the Miami Herald reported.
“Perla and I are headed to dinner with the two FDLE agents,” Keefe wrote to Montgomerie on Aug. 15.
Keefe, Montgomerie and Huerta did not respond to requests for comment from The Post. The messages between them were released after the Florida Center for Government Accountability, a watchdog group, sued the governor for public records related to the flights.
One month later, Fox News was given exclusive access to broadcast video of dozens of migrants getting off two planes flown from San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard, a vacation spot favored by wealthy Democrats like former president Barack Obama.
News organizations scrambled to learn about the recruiter who, according to interviews with the mostly Venezuelan migrants, had enticed them with promises of jobs and housing on the other side of the journey. Shortly after the flights, FDLE spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger told The Post that Huerta “is in no way affiliated with FDLE.”
Asked about the texts showing agents working with Huerta in August, FDLE’s statement to The Post stressed that agents did not have contact with the migrants flown to Martha’s Vineyard.
“The steady influx of undocumented migrants into Texas and other border states represents a threat to the security of Florida,” the statement said. “We have long investigated human smuggling, human trafficking, and drug trafficking — state crimes commonly associated with criminals who enter, or bring victims into, the U.S. illegally.”
DeSantis held another news conference in February attacking the Biden administration’s border policies and endorsing stronger penalties for human smuggling, along with other recommendations made by the grand jury. Glass was by his side.
“I just want to tell you what a pleasure it is to work for Governor DeSantis,” he said. “We have a Florida governor who gets it and he understands it, especially when it comes to law enforcement and public safety … These federal failures are requiring Florida fixes and this is the man to fix it.”
DeSantis’s suspension of a Democratic prosecutor last year also demonstrated the governor flexing executive power over FDLE.
After the U.S. Supreme Court last summer overturned the constitutional right to abortion, Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren joined prosecutors nationwide in pledging not to prosecute abortion-related crimes. DeSantis had sparred with Warren for years and recently signed a law banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
FDLE officials were asked by the governor’s office that summer to produce crime statistics that would help build the governor’s case against Warren, according to a deposition in the federal lawsuit Warren filed against the governor.
Keefe, the governor’s adviser, described in the deposition obtained by The Post how the research on Warren included talking to law enforcement leaders and pressing FDLE for crime data. FDLE collects crime statistics from local law enforcement agencies and shares it with the FBI and other states.
“I know that the general counsel’s office had some interactions with FDLE having to do with crime statistics and data,” Keefe said. “There was some inquiry into those things.”
In August, DeSantis suspended Warren, arguing that his refusal to enforce specific laws translates to neglect of duty and incompetence. But the order does not contain any criminal allegations that would have warranted the involvement of the state’s police force in examining his record as a prosecutor, said Jean-Jacques Cabou, a lawyer representing Warren.
“We were stunned to see FDLE play any role in the Governor’s illegal suspension of Mr. Warren,” he said. “This is not a law enforcement investigation.”
FDLE said in its statement that the agency’s mission includes “more than criminal investigations” and that maintaining crime statistics is part of its job. The governor’s office did not respond to questions about FDLE’s role in Warren’s suspension.
Following his landslide reelection last fall, DeSantis is turning to GOP supermajorities in the legislature to help him further engage law enforcement in support of his political goals — and to provide legal cover for his past efforts.
In a special legislative session earlier this year, as judges were tossing out illegal voting cases because the statewide prosecutor lacked jurisdiction, the legislature handed the power to handle election fraud charges to the prosecutor appointed by the attorney general. In the same session, lawmakers passed a measure allowing state officials to relocate migrants from anywhere in the United States — not just from Florida — in response to a lawsuit over the flights to Martha’s Vineyard.
On Tuesday, lawmakers approved a sweeping bill cracking down on illegal immigrants that directs FDLE to assist the federal government in enforcing immigration laws. The bill includes $12 million for additional migrant flights.
DeSantis is also seeking to increase state spending on the FDLE-assisted election crimes office, as well as the Florida State Guard, a long-defunct force reestablished last year with a $10 million budget. One budget proposal would more than triple the size of the force to 1,500 with a budget of roughly $100 million and a wide-ranging mandate. Guard members would carry weapons and be able to make arrests.
A person familiar with the negotiations who was not authorized to speak publicly said the governor’s office has contemplated using guard members to monitor ballot boxes, track illegal immigrants and respond to protests. The governor’s office did not respond to questions about that proposal.
Glass, the FDLE chief, backed a bill passed this week that would shield the governor’s travel from public disclosure — even his past trips. FDLE is in charge of the governor’s travel in state-owned vehicles. Florida House leaders also added $3.8 million this week to FDLE’s budget for protecting the governor and his family.
The additional money and public records exemption come as DeSantis is making numerous out-of-state appearances at book signings and political events before an expected announcement that he’s joining the 2024 presidential race. Glass told lawmakers last month he was “comfortable” with the new restrictions on public records and said it was necessary to protect the “security posture” of FDLE agents.
Republican lawmakers have defended the immigration and election-related initiatives as part of a broader effort to maintain law and order. But FDLE veterans are concerned that the agency is growing too beholden to the governor.
“When you politicize a law enforcement agency, it’s very dangerous,” said Sanz, the former assistant commissioner. “It runs the risk of becoming the governor’s personal police force.”
Alice Crites, Josh Dawsey, Molly Hennessy-Fiske and Lori Rozsa contributed to this report.