Just weeks into the new school year, Gov. Ron DeSantis and his right-hand anti-Woke doc, Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, are taking aim at something else that has kept Florida kids healthy for decades: vaccines.
At a press conference Wednesday, Ladapo said the state is going to eliminate every last vaccine mandate, because forcing kids to get shots to go to school is “wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.” Yes, he really said vaccines were like slavery.
But he offered zero details about how this would actually work. Right now, all 50 states and D.C. require certain vaccines for students to attend school. We’re talking the basics: polio, diphtheria, measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis B. Stuff that stopped wiping out kids a generation ago thanks to public health, not thoughts and prayers.
Read related: Gov. Ron DeSantis sends Florida DOGE squad to sniff out Miami-Dade budget
Florida would be the first state to toss those requirements out the window.
Doctors and public health experts are calling it exactly what it is: reckless. Dr. Rana Alissa, president of the Florida Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said vaccines are especially important in schools because, let’s face it, they are like petri dishes. Smart parents take precautions at home when it’s back-to-school time so they don’t get sick, too.
South Florida has already seen declining vaccination rates. Miami-Dade’s kindergarten immunizations have slipped almost 3% since 2019. Broward dropped by 10%. In 2024, there was a measles outbreak in Weston that infected seven kids at Manatee Bay Elementary. This year, the CDC has logged more than 1,400 measles cases nationwide, including six in Florida.
Miami-Dade School Board Member Luisa Santos told Roberto Rodriguez-Tejera on Actualidad Thursday morning (and it’s so nice to have him back, even temporarily) that there are already exemptions for religious and medical reasons. Nobody really asks any questions, though. And there has been a sharp increase — from 3,700 in the 2019-20 school year to 7,200 last school year. Statewide, Florida had 10,556 non-medical exemptions in the 2024–25 school year, the second-highest total after Texas, according to the Center for Disease Control.
“So it is something this community for different reasons is already saying, ‘I’m going to take this exemption,’” Santos said. “But that puts the whole community at risk.” Particularly immunocompromised children, teachers and staff.
But not yet. Santos explained that students are still required to be vaccinated to be in public schools this year. DeSantis and Lapado can get good press for their red meat base from this, but the state lawmakers would have to make that change for next year. That’s almost a sure bet though, since the Republican-led legislature has been sharpening their anti-woke talking points.
Mirroring the national debate, local parents and leaders are mixed on the topic. Some anti-vaxxers and GOP champions are cheering the move.
“Florida continues to lead the way on medical freedom,” posted Miami-Dade Commissioner Roberto Gonzalez, who has been trying to grow his political profile since he led the county’s drive against fluoride. “Proud to stand with the MAHA commission in protecting every Floridian’s right to make their own health decisions free from mandates and government overreach.”
Others worry that there could be outbreaks.
“Are we losing our minds? This is getting ridiculous and pathetic,” Congresswoman Frederica Wilson posted on X.“Are we trying to kill millions of innocent children? Childhood vaccines save lives. Abolishing them is INSANITY. 
“As a former teacher and principal, I know how vital childhood vaccinations are. Ending vaccine mandates puts the whole community at risk of preventable diseases. Decades of research show the effectiveness of vaccines, and we cannot just disregard the health of our children,” Wilson said. “Joseph Ladapo’s tenure as Florida’s Surgeon General has been marred by misinformation and harmful narratives. Enough is enough — Governor DeSantis must fire him, or Joseph Ladapo must resign before more harm is done.”
Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith kept it short: “Today is a great day for chickenpox, measles, and polio in Florida.”
Miami-Dade School Board Member Steve Gallon III seemed offended by the slavery comment. “The comparison of vaccinations to the horrors of slavery is incredible,” he posted.
‘This is devastating news,” Jill Roberts, associate professor at the University of South Florida’s College of Public Health, told Axios Tampa Bay. “You’re going to leave kids susceptible to diseases that are deadly and have lifelong consequences.”
Even Republican Sen. Rick Scott was scratching his bald head and told Marc Caputo, “Florida already has a good system that allows families to opt out based on religious and personal beliefs, which balances our children’s health and parents’ rights.”
United Teachers of Dade, the local labor union for teachers in the county’s public school system, issued a statement calling the plan “deeply concerning,” because it could expose vulnerable children to preventable disease. “From our standpoint, for decades, school vaccinations and requirements have played a role in keeping classrooms healthy,” said UTD spokesman Ricky Junquera, who was also a political advisor for former Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell in her 2024 race for Senate.
Osmani Gonzalez, president of the Miami-Dade County Council of PTAs, was far darker: “This is the type of policy that creates the possibility of preventable tragedies and the unnecessary loss of children’s lives within our schools,” he told The Miami Herald.
And Ladra can’t help asking the obvious: Why are we pretending polio and measles are woke?
Because that’s what this is really about. Not health. Not kids. Not science. It’s about the next culture war headline for a governor desperate to keep his name in lights — even if it means Florida becomes the testing ground for preventable epidemics.
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The day after Congresswoman Frederica Wilson visited the ICE Krome Detention Center in Miami-Dade to investigate claims of overcrowded, unsanitary, dangerous and inhuman conditions, a female Haitian detainee died at the Broward Transitional Center, another ICE facility 58 miles to the northeast.
On Friday, Wilson will be joined by Congresswoman Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick to visit the ICE facility where Marie Ange Blaise died last week. They will go in at 9 a.m. and tour the facility for 90 minutes, according to a press statement from Wilson’s office. There will be another press gaggle right outside afterwards at 10:30 a.m.
Read related: Frederica Wilson: ICE is building a tent city at Krome to house more detainees
Earlier in April, Wilson visited Krome but said she didn’t find the overcrowded conditions that had been reported and seen in videos taken by detainees and shared in social media. She suggested the federal government bussed detainees out for a “field trip” and cleaned up to cover up the real conditions detainees are living with.
How does she know they won’t do the same thing in Broward?
Blaise, 44, was arrested Feb. 12 as she tried to board a flight to North Carolina from the international airport in Saint Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, according to a public statement by ICE. She did not have a valid immigrant visa, ICE said, and was issued a Notice of Expedited Removal immediately. She was first taken to a custodial facility in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and sent the following week to the Richwood Correctional Center in Louisiana. On April 5, ICE transferred her to the Pompano Beach Detention Center at 3900 Powerline Rd.
She wasn’t even there three weeks when ICE reported she had died.
Her death is under investigation.
Cherfilus-McCormick suggested on Wednesday on the House floor that Blaise did not get needed medical care while in ICE custody.
“Marie had been complaining about chest pain for hours,” Cherfilus-McCormick, the only Haitian-American Congress member, said. “They gave her some pills and told her to go lie down. Unfortunately, Marie never woke up.
“Her loved ones deserve answers. They deserve accountability,” she said.
ICE denied keeping Blaise from medical care and said all detainees get the proper treatment.
“ICE remains committed to ensuring that all those in its custody reside in safe, secure, and humane environments,” the agency said in a statement. “Comprehensive medical care is provided from the moment individuals arrive and throughout the entirety of their stay. All people in ICE custody receive medical, dental and mental health screening and 24-hour emergency care at each detention facility. At no time during detention is a detained illegal alien denied emergent care.”
But that is during normal operations. These facilities are reportedly stretched beyond capacity. At Krome, Wilson reported seeing a plexiglass or plastic tent had just been built to house up to 400 immigrants. Guards are likely overwhelmed and raw. The detainees are scared out of their minds. It is a recipe for disaster.
It certainly hasn’t been smooth going. At least six people have died in ICE custody so far this year, according to the agency’s own reporting.
Read related: Campaign ramps up vs Miami’s Cuban, Republican congressional delegation
“This Administration’s deportation process has been sloppy and reckless since Day 1. No due process and no transparency,” Cherfilus-McCormick said to her colleagues. “Just families being illegally ripped apart and left to fend for themselves.
“In severe instances, innocent people have actually died,” she said.
“Immigrants are being treated without basic dignity and being denied medical care,” Cherfilus-McCormick said. “It is this neglect and cruelty that is really hurting our American families who are being deported at this moment. We must have transparency. We must have justice.”
It seems like White House and ICE care about as much about a death on their watch as the Cuban-American Republican congress members who haven’t done much if anything to object to what’s been happening. Five days after Blaise died, ICE giddily announced it had arrested 66,463 people without legal immigration Status, deporting 65,682 in the first 100 days of Trump’s second presidency? Has anybody bothered to find out what happened to the other 981?
And it doesn’t look like the Trump administration is going to back off its aggressive tactics — recruiting local police and the United States Postal Service, raiding schools, snatching college students off the street or the spouses of U.S. citizens at immigration meetings — anytime soon. ICE just said that last week’s Operation Tidal Wave in Florida netted more than 1,100 detainees and Gov. Ron DeSantis said Thursday he wants the National Guard to act as immigration judges to deport people faster.
“What we’re doing is a change in the culture this first hundred days, and we are seeing success,” Homeland Security Spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told National Public Radio, which is doing a great job while it still exists.
“But we’re going to see those numbers increase in the next hundred days.”
What? The number of detainees that die in custody?
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Congresswoman Frederica Wilson took an hourlong tour Thursday of the Krome Detention Facility, where there have been reports of severe overcrowding, leading to unsanitary and dangerous conditions. But she certain she did not get to see the real thing.
“I am positive that they took people out today, so I wouldn’t see them,” Wilson said in an impromptu press conference outside the West Miami-Dade facility, which she said had been cleaned up for her visit. “It was like somebody went in there yesterday and put on a whole new coat of fresh paint. You could even smell the paint.
“That’s what they do.”
The other thing that caught her attention was a large tent. Not really a tent in the traditional sense. Wilson said it was a plexiglass structure that had been built in 14 days to house up to an additional 400 detainees. So, she knows the facility is more crowded than they let on, as indicated by video taken on cellphones inside and provided to NBC6. Otherwise, why build the outdoor housing?
“This is not my first rodeo,” Wilson said. “They take them on a field trip so you don’t see who is actually in there. But they did admit that they are actually building a tent city.
“Trust me, everybody is not home. Somebody was taken out of this prison today — in buses.”
Read related: Congresswoman Frederica Wilson will tour troubled Krome Detention Center
This is the first time Wilson has gone back to Krome — which has gotten some national attention because of the mass detentions and deportations under Donald Trump — in 43 years, when it was used to house female Haitian refugees. “This is an immigrant rich community. I represent Cubans, Venezuelans, Haitians, Bahamians, Jamaicans. Everybody is in this facility,” she said.
This time, Wilson went to Krome after getting calls from concerned constituents, including a woman whose husband was detained after going to a scheduled immigration hearing about two weeks ago. Married to a U.S. citizen with a child here, the man was taken away and moved three times. Thursday, Wilson said, his family reported he was in a prison in Texas. Another immigrant, a university student from the Congo, has been “moved from detention center to detention center.”
She says the transfers are intentionally designed. “I think that she they find out you have a strong attorney and people interested in you, they consider it a threat. So they move you and they keep moving you until nobody can keep up with it,” Wilson said.
She also said the detainees are not at all the criminals they are being cast as and implied that there are mentally disabled detainees in the general population.
“I wanted to see all these criminals, with their faces tattooed and with gold teeth. I wanted to see who were these dangerous people that they had picked up off the street and put in a detention center. I didn’t see that,” she said. “I saw hard-working men. Some more literate than others. I even saw some who are mentally disturbed and have mental issues. I saw some who have physical issues, who are sick.
“I saw some who weren’t quite sure what was going on,” she said. “In fact, most of the people who are there are not criminals. They’re calling being undocumented a crime.” Wilson said she had access to detainees who spoke freely and most were just family men who worked and paid taxes.
She also wanted to find out if they were building a tent city. “I asked if they were going to build a tent city, to house the overflow. And the answer is yes.” The government has already built a two-story structure of plexiglass or other material “with big pipes of air conditioning coming in” and a TV room.
Read related: Cuban American congress members stay silent on TPS, immigrant detention
Wilson said that since the Riley Act was passed in January, “people are going to be picked up on the street every day and sent here.”
The Laken Riley Act is named for a 22-year-old Augusta University nursing student who was killed while she was jogging at the University of Georgia by a 26-year-old Venezuelan man who had entered the country illegally. It requires the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to detain illegal immigrants admitting to, charged with, or convicted of theft-related crimes, assaulting a police officer, or a crime that results in death or serious bodily injury like drunk driving.
“I asked them, ‘Are you prepared to build or construct… more tents for people?’ And they said yes,” the congresswoman told a gathering of press outside the facility, which sits on and is named for Krome Avenue on the old edge of the Everglades.
“It’s going to get worse. Every time it gets overcrowded, they will build a new tent. Because it only takes 14 days. I was stunned.”
So is Ladra. If it’s that easy, why aren’t there temporary housing stations for the homeless? Oye, Ron Book? Are you paying attention?
Wilson said that she was concerned because there are no more ombudsmen to oversee the civil rights of immigrants in detention. “They were fired. Fired! So I’m going to serve a the overseer,” she said. “I’m going to come back as often as I can.” She is also going to encourage other members of Congress to visit. When she went to the immigration detention facility in Homestead years ago, when they were housing unaccompanied children, she took 10 members of Congress.
“I’m going to have to figure out a day I can come and not tell them I’m coming. And I have a right to be there.”
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Congresswoman Frederica Wilson will be the first member of Congress to get a tour of the Krome Detention Center in West Miami-Dade after reports of overcrowded, dangerous, unsanitary and inhumane conditions in the wake of the mass immigrant detentions and deportations by the new Donald Trump administration.
Wilson sent a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem earlier this month asking for access and a walk through. Her office announced Wednesday that she would get an hour inside on Thursday afternoon. She will be available for the press afterwards, around 2 p.m. So will representatives from Americans for Immigration Justice, which has joined the ACLU Florida on the federal lawsuit to challenge a Florida law that authorizes state and local authorities to jail people solely on immigration status, “powers the Constitution reserves exclusively to the federal government.”6
The congresswoman, who represents Florida’s 24th district — which includes Little Haiti, Biscayne Park, Miami Gardens, North Miami, Opa-Locka and the southern part of Broward County — has received letters and phone calls from constituents who have relatives in the detention center, said Alvaro Perpuly, Wilson’s press secretary. Or who were in the detention center. One such detainee has already been moved elsewhere, so Wilson won’t be able to check on him, Perpuly said.
Read related: Cuban American congress members stay silent on TPS, immigrant detention
“She’s trying to set up individual meetings, but it’s kind of hard to know who’s really there because they keep moving people around,” Perpuly told Political Cortadito.
The visit was not coordinated through Noem, but rather the detention center facility itself, Perpuly said. “By law, they cannot prevent a member of Congress from entering. They have more leeway with other electeds on the state and local level.”
That might be why Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava has not received an answer to her own request on April 3 for a tour. A staffer said she had been invited by the congresswoman. “ICE informed her office that per their protocol, the mayor would need to schedule a separate time to tour the facility, which we hope to coordinate as swiftly as possible,” said Deputy Chief of Staff Rachel Johnson.
But what is stopping Congressman Carlos Gimenez, Mario Diaz-Balart or Maria Elvira Salazar from checking the place out themselves? The three Cuban-American legislators have come under fire for their silence in the face of the community’s fear and uncertainty. There have been billboards and video ads to blast them for their complicity.
Even a full page ad “open letter” from healthcare mogul and habitual campaign donor Mike Fernandez didn’t seem to move the dial.
Calls to Gimenez representatives at his district and Washington offices were not returned.
Detainees are seen sleeping on the floor next to each other or in chairs in a viral video that was taken, obviously under cover, by a Mexican detainee near tears and provided to NBC6 Miami. Some detainees have had to sleep outside. They have reportedly not been allowed to communicate with loved ones or legal representation regularly. Some family members of detainees say they are not given enough food or even water. In February, a Ukranian immigrant died at a nearby hospital after getting sick at Krome.
Read related: Video blasts U.S. Rep. Carlos Gimenez for silence on ending TPS, deportations
“The increase in detainees being sent to the Krome Processing Center has caused conditions to deteriorate, creating an unsafe and inhumane detention environment,” Levine Cava wrote in the letter to Noem. “Allegations of substandard conditions include inadequate access to water and food, unsanitary confinement, medical neglect and abuse such as prolonged shackling.”
Wilson, who will be going with members of her team, knows that she may not see those things.
“She’s very aware they’re going to clean up a bit and make it look nicer,” Perpuly said.
“She wants to see where the detainees are actually being held, talk to some of the folks there, see if there are any women there, and just generally see what’s going on.”
Stay tuned. Political Cortadito will follow up on Thursday.
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Nearly $50 million in federal money will trickle down to South Florida as part of the 2023 appropriations funding package, says Democrat Congresswoman Frederica Wilson, who championed for 15 different projects and programs.

“Today, Congresswoman Frederica S. Wilson (FL-24) announced she has secured $49,717,944 in community Project Funding for Florida’s 24th District. The funding is a part of the House spending bills included in the final 2023 appropriations government funding package. These appropriations respond directly to some of the most pressing needs in South Florida,” reads a press release from her office.

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Practice run against Frederica Wilson could set her up as heir

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