Florida Police Arrest Dozens Of Illegal Immigrants Looting Hurricane Victims

In the wake of two devastating back to back hurricanes, Florida’s law enforcement has taken a firm stance against looting, with some sheriffs and Governor De Santis encouraging homeowners to shoot if they come in contact with thieves seeking to pillage their homes. It may surprise some readers to learn that an overwhelming plurality of the looters apprehended were illegal immigrants, adding insult to injury for law abiding citizens.

Fox News reports:

Looting patrols in Pinellas County over the last three weeks rounded up 45 suspects on 68 charges that included armed robbery, burglary, loitering and prowling, grand theft, vandalism and trespassing, according to Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri.

Another 58 suspects were arrested in an operation allegedly targeting unlicensed contractors. Gualtieri said their scams mostly involved billing victims a total of $250 million for repairs they never intended to do.

Of the 45 suspects arrested by anti-looting patrols across the Pinellas County barrier islands, at least 41 of the suspects are illegal immigrants, Gualtieri said at a press conference Thursday. He said nearly all of the suspects were from South America or Central America.

The sheriff added that his office had contact with 196 other individuals who were in beach neighborhoods where they did not belong, but that officers did not have probable cause to arrest them. Of those, 163 were found to be illegal immigrants, he said.

There were also reports of illegal immigrants looting Appalachia, where Hurricane Helene had a much harsher impact than it did on Florida, washing away entire homes, roads and communities.

While left wing politicians have encouraged and excused illegal immigration, insisting that border crossers are “just looking for better lives,” Americans in every corner of the country are being forced to confront the fact that the issue is more complicated than they’ve been led to believe, and an open border makes them vulnerable to danger and crime — especially when coupled with lax prosecutorial standards that easily let criminals off the hook.

As deputies arrested dozens of individuals attempting to exploit the chaos in the wake of these natural disasters, the message was clear: lawlessness will not be tolerated in the Sunshine State. These arrests serve as a reminder that a significant portion of illegal immigrants are willing to engage in criminal activity that endangers the safety and well-being of local residents.

This recent wave of arrests highlights not only the urgent need for effective law enforcement but also the broader implications of the Biden-Harris administration’s open borders approach.

While looting has always been an unfortunate reality of hurricane aftermath, law enforcement says they’re seeing it at levels they never have, with a large number of participants in the country illegally.

Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said, “We’ve never seen anything of this magnitude before. We’ve never seen this influx of people from out of the area that are clearly just here to steal and to pilfer and to do bad things and to target these vulnerable people.” 

He stated his commitment to protecting and serving citizens, and insisted he’d bring thieves to justice. “As the Pinellas beaches recover, we are going to continue these patrols and arrest everyone we can who is stealing from the vulnerable victims of two back-to-back storms that have devastated our community.”