DeSantis highlights petition-fraud prosecutions, urges state cooperation with DHS on immigration enforcement

At a Vero Beach event promoting America250FL, Governor DeSantis expanded on his administration’s work on election integrity and immigration enforcement, saying the state has pursued petition-verification reforms and opened criminal investigations into fraudulent signature-gathering.

The governor described a reform requiring that people who sign ballot-petition forms receive verification postcards. "We have thousands of people getting those postcards saying, I never signed that doggone petition," he said, and added that the state is pursuing "big time criminal investigations" in the current cycle.

DeSantis framed petition fraud as especially consequential because a fraudulent petition can qualify a constitutional amendment for the ballot. "If you have petition fraud it could lead to changing the constitution," he said, adding that such changes are effectively "forever." The transcript does not include statute names or case citations for ongoing investigations; the governor treated the inquiries as active enforcement matters.

In response to a press question about the role of the press, the governor also outlined immigration-enforcement steps that followed a January 2025 legislative special session he called. He said the session produced requirements that state and local officials must cooperate with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on immigration enforcement — for example, turning over noncitizens taken into custody to DHS when state officers have reason to believe they are in the country illegally. "If you got someone in your county jail, that's an illegal alien, you know, you need to make sure DHS is able to come pick them up and remove them from our communities," DeSantis said.

DeSantis criticized elected officials in other states who, he said, refuse to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement and alleged some officials are engaged in organized political opposition to enforcement. Those allegations were presented as the governor's characterizations and the transcript does not record rebuttals or specific legal findings in response.

The remarks combine policy description, political argument and claims about ongoing investigations; the transcript does not include supporting documents, legal citations or statements from federal authorities. Where legal text or statute names were not provided in the remarks, this article reports the governor's descriptions and the administration's claimed actions without independent verification.