With great fanfare, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed several laws in May to “crack down on Communist China,” as he put it, to curb Chinese influence and prevent China from gaining a stronger economic foothold in Florida.
DeSantis banned the TikTok app from government devices. He restricted Chinese citizens from owning land in Florida. In what critics saw as a political stunt, he cut off state subsidies to prestigious private schools in Weston and suburban Orlando, claiming they are controlled by an investment firm with ties to China.
One of the laws DeSantis signed in May was Senate Bill 264, which prohibits Florida government entities from doing business with the People’s Republic of China and other foreign “countries of concern.”
But as with so many of the governor’s political pronouncements, the reality is much more complicated than it appears.
A Broward County connection
Our story begins at Fort Lauderdale’s Executive Airport, of all places.
A few weeks before the bill-signing ceremony targeting China, the DeSantis administration quietly signed multimillion-dollar contracts to lease a sleek high-tech aircraft to track down and detain illegal immigrants, especially in the Florida Keys.
The DeSantis administration’s aircraft of choice was a twin-engine, high performance, diesel-powered jet known as a Diamond DA62, made by Diamond Aircraft, an Austrian firm which in 2017 was purchased by Wanfeng Aviation Industry Co., headquartered in China.
On many days, as the flight tracking website flightaware.com shows, Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) agents board the plane at Fort Lauderdale Executive, where we photographed it recently. From there, they often fly down to Marathon in the Florida Keys in search of undocumented immigrants.
Operation Vigilant Sentry, or OVS as it is called, claimed to have arrested 20 undocumented arrivals in Key Largo a couple of weeks ago — 17 of them Chinese nationals.
A very pricey arrangement
The state’s one-year contract is with the Bank of Utah, a trustee for the aircraft’s owners. It isn’t cheap. State records show Florida will pay $2 million through next May (the cost to replace the plane would be $4 million). The contract, obtained through a public records request, was signed by DeSantis’ chief of emergency management Kevin Guthrie and FDLE Commissioner Mark Glass.
More apparent contradictions in DeSantis’ record on China became a flashpoint in a Republican presidential debate in Miami on Wednesday.
Rival Nikki Haley asked DeSantis why he scrubbed the website of Florida’s economic development arm to remove positive references to China as a leading trading partner of Florida.
Don’t try to find it. Suddenly missing from the website of Select Florida (formerly Enterprise Florida) is a three-year-old report, finished in DeSantis’ first term, that called Florida “an ideal business destination for Chinese companies.”
A more recent report emphasized Central America, South America, the Caribbean and Mexico as trading partners and the need to lure business away from China.
The sanitizing of the website was first reported by The Messenger, and the website factcheck.org looked at both candidates’ claims and found both to be slightly misleading.
The state’s response
The governor’s office referred questions about the aircraft contract to the Division of Emergency Management (DEM), an agency directly under DeSantis’ control.
In response to questions from the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board, a DEM spokeswoman said in an email: “The plane that DEM leased was from the Bank of Utah … In no way did we send a nickel to China. The narrative you are trying to pursue is purely false.”
No, Florida is not directly doing business with China here. The state is doing business with a bank that is doing business with an unknown plane owner who’s doing business with China. The middlemen just allow DeSantis to keep his hands ostensibly clean, and show how porous this ban on doing business with Chinese companies really is.
The state is shelling out a lot of taxpayer money for a politically inspired program that is obviously not a core function of state government: immigration enforcement.
The state is leasing an aircraft made by a company owned by the Chinese, to carry out a signature DeSantis priority of searching for undocumented immigrants. It’s a transparent DeSantis strategy to highlight President Joe Biden’s failure to secure the southern border.
Call it a coincidence if you want. But the state’s leasing of an aircraft made by a Chinese-owned company to hunt for Chinese nationals crossing our border vividly illustrates China’s economic reach in Florida, whether DeSantis likes it or not, and reveals the limits of his “crackdown on Communist China.”
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writer Martin Dyckman and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. Send letters to the editor to insight@orlandosentinel.com.
