Ron DeSantis tried to crusade against undocumented students. Florida is fighting back | US politics

It was a week in which two of Ron DeSantis’s flagship culture war crusades – education and immigration – collided. And it did not end well for Florida’s hard-right Republican governor.

Alongside a revolt by previously loyal lawmakers upset by DeSantis’s “power grab” in trying to write and impose immigration law, he also found himself under fire from tens of thousands of undocumented college and university students furious at his push to strip them of in-state tuition rates.

DeSantis and the legislature want to end the in-state tuition waiver, which was granted to certain undocumented students in 2014 under a Republican-sponsored bill that its sponsor, then state congresswoman Jeanette Nuñez, said blended “compassion and common sense”.

Now, as Florida’s lieutenant governor and one of DeSantis’s most fervently loyal acolytes, Nuñez has reversed course and decided that the law she once championed instead incentivizes illegal immigration.

Scores of those who will be affected gathered at rallies and mock graduations across Florida this week to protest against the move. They say it could almost quadruple what they would be made to pay to attend state-run campuses, and in many cases force them to abandon their education altogether.

Yet advocacy groups see a possible opening in the unprecedented infighting. The governor and legislature, they say, are trying to “out-Trump” each other in a rush to see who can come up with the harshest immigration agenda. Nothing could end up becoming law if they will not support each other’s proposals.

“In the chaos of what is happening in Florida, we’re seeing opportunities to show what’s happening and get Floridians to use their voice to speak out against it,” said Gaby Pacheco, president and chief executive of thedream.us, which supports undocumented immigrant youth at college and in their careers.

“Some of these students are teenagers who are looking at adults for support, help and leadership, and the adults in the room are willing to throw every single one of these young people under the bus for political gains and to show how tough they are.”

DeSantis appears to have been upset most by the lawmakers’ stance on other immigration measures. They passed this week their own immigration law, the so-called Tackling and Reforming Unlawful Migration Policy (Trump) Act. That law was modified with White House assistance and looked to be a thinly disguised attempt at sucking up to the new president. It included axing the in-state waiver.

But the governor denounced the act as “weak-sauce” compared with his own proposals, even though they include draconian measures such as a mandatory death penalty for immigrants convicted of certain crimes of violence. He has promised to veto the Trump Act.

Analysts say DeSantis was rattled by the snub, attending a series of hastily arranged roundtables across Florida at which he continued to slam his fellow Republicans, threatening those who crossed him by promising to fund their opponents in upcoming primaries. Meanwhile, DeSantis supporters and staffers, whose salaries are taxpayer-funded, launched a furious social media blitz against the governor’s new critics.

That further angered the Republican Florida house speaker, Daniel Perez, who on Monday abruptly “gaveled out” a special legislative session on immigration that DeSantis summoned lawmakers to attend. Perez did so almost as soon as it began.

“Of course you’re going to have your handful of politicians, a small group of activists and a lot of paid bots on social media trying to gaslight you,” Perez told house colleagues.

“But we know that truth matters, and simply saying that something is terrible over and over doesn’t actually make it true. Threatening others to get your way isn’t leadership, it’s immaturity.”

Adding further intrigue to the Republican power struggle in Tallahassee are moves by minority Democrats. Some have suggested they would be open to supporting Republicans in overriding DeSantis’s veto of the Trump Act if the reversal of the in-state tuition waiver was removed; and state senate minority leader, Jason Pizzo, said he planned to introduce his own immigration legislation that he believes can win bipartisan support.

For their part, the students say they are weary of being used as pawns by feuding politicians who all seem determined to curb their opportunities.

“It’s disheartening to see the questions the students are asking, like ‘I’m doing so well in school, I’ve been doing my part, and now I’m being told I can’t go to college?,’” Pacheco said.

“Let’s be clear, we’re going from somebody who is already paying about $6,000 a year for their tuition and fees to now being told they need to pay $22,000 when their families are making maybe $35,000 to $40,000 a year as immigrants.

“The reality is that they’re not just taking away the in-state tuition, they’re taking away their ability to go to college altogether.”

Several student and immigration advocacy groups in Florida have come together to oppose the measure they say will affect more than 40,000 young people, and rob many of their education dreams.

“That they’re going head first and targeting youth is unfortunately a very political, partisan thing. For me it’s important because of my identity and because I benefited from it,” said Idalia Quinteros, an activist with the Florida Student Power Network.

Quinteros said she came to Florida from El Salvador when she was eight, and graduated from Miami-Dade’s honors college as an undocumented immigrant through the public education system.

“Immigrant students, undocumented students, don’t qualify for any financial aid, we don’t qualify for the majority of scholarships, we can’t apply for loans. Our parents, if they’re also immigrants, can’t apply for loans for us, so the financial hardship is already a lot as it is, and eliminating in-state tuition would be adding back another huge obstacle,” she said.

“There’s so much hypocrisy because Republicans supported it and now they’re backtracking because they want to look good in front of Trump. And now it’s like who takes the credit, the governor or the Republican legislators?

“It’s disappointing because they’re going after our immigrant families and attacking communities instead of focusing on the real issues that Florida is having.”