Once bitter rivals, President Trump said his relationship with Gov. Ron DeSantis is now a ’10,’ during a stop at a state-run migrant detention camp quickly set up in the Florida Everglades.
Although Trump qualified that as “maybe 9.9,” it was clear that the Florida governor’s embrace of hardline immigration tactics has gone a long way toward rehabilitating himself with the president.
Later, Trump thanked his former Republican presidential opponent – whom he once dubbed “Ron DeSanctimonious” – for building the facility that the governor’s appointed attorney general, James Uthmeier, had branded “Alligator Alcatraz.”
The razor-wired facility, which can hold 3,000 migrants, is set to receive its first detainees as early as July 2.
“We may have some skirmishes even in the future,” Trump said to DeSantis during his July 1 visit. “I doubt it. But I will always come back because we just seem to … have blood that seems to match pretty well.”
And DeSantis repeatedly lavished praise on the president for his focus on immigration: “We work very well on this, and other issues,” the governor said, standing alongside the president.
National Guard legal officers to act as immigration judges
During the tour of the facility, Trump said he was approving the governor’s request to deputize Florida National Guard Judge Advocate General Corps (JAG) officers to act as immigration judges at the holding camp.
The move could hasten the deportation of migrants by eliminating their status reviews from the usual federal administrative courts. DeSantis cast it as cutting through “bureaucracy.”
The repurposed Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, an isolated airstrip within Big Cypress National Preserve that’s about 65 miles east of Naples, is expected to be supplemented by a second, 2,000-person detention facility at the Camp Blanding National Guard training center in Northeast Florida.
More: Florida to stand up second illegal immigration detention center at Camp Blanding
DeSantis during their Republican primary contest in 2023 had criticized Trump’s inability in his first White House term to make good on building a border wall and making Mexico finance it.
Trump and his campaign, though, bullied DeSantis steadily during the primary and the Florida governor’s White House hopes ended in January 2024 after a distant, second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses.
An awkward history
The pair’s less awkward history includes Trump having endorsed the longshot DeSantis for governor in 2018. That appeared to heighten Trump’s animosity when DeSantis then sought the GOP presidential nomination.
But the relationship now seems improved with their shared targeting of migrants.
And six months into a second term as president, Trump is still shaping political futures.
That seemed evident at the remote detention facility, where a host of leading Florida Republicans joined the president and governor.
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They shared a stage with Trump, DeSantis and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for a roundtable on immigration – which focused mostly on condemning the earlier policies of former President Biden.
Among them was U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Naples. The president already has endorsed him in next year’s Florida governor’s race. Uthmeier, too, was singled out by the president, who said of him, “The guy’s got a future.”
Also introduced was state Sen. Joe Gruters of Sarasota, a former Republican Party of Florida chair who is close to Trump and has also been endorsed by the president for the now-vacant state Cabinet post of chief financial officer in the 2026 election.
DeSantis and Gruters have been at odds for years and the governor is not expected to appoint him CFO, but rather another Republican state senator: Blaise Ingoglia of Spring Hill.
Gruters and Ingoglia could square off in next year’s GOP primary for CFO.
Joe Gruters (left) and Blaise Ingoglia are GOP rivals for the empty position of state CFO.
Speaker chooses to sit apart from governor and others
Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson was welcomed by Trump, who then introduced House Speaker Daniel Perez, R-Miami, who chose to sit in the audience – away from the head table.
Perez has been in DeSantis’ dog house.
The pair battled through three special sessions earlier this year before the Legislature and DeSantis reached agreement on an immigration plan that has effectively forced state and local police agencies to assist U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement in rounding up suspected illegal aliens.
During the recently completed legislative session that extended into six weeks of overtime, Perez and DeSantis fought fiercely and publicly over tax breaks, spending and the House’s investigation of Hope Florida, the social services nonprofit connected to First Lady Casey DeSantis.
“Thank you, Daniel,” Trump said. “What, you didn’t want to sit up here with us?”
John Kennedy is a reporter in the USA TODAY Network’s Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at jkennedy2@gannett.com. Follow him on X: @JKennedyReport.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Once rivals, Trump and DeSantis now bond over illegal immigration
