On the day a law went into effect allowing a handful of officials to declare organizations terrorist groups, Gov. Ron DeSantis held a news conference in Tampa announcing a recommendation from the state’s chief’s chief of domestic security to designate the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim Brotherhood, and Antifa domestic terrorist organizations.
Nearly two weeks later, that recommendation has yet to go into effect, and there is no clear timetable when it will be, according to a filing in federal court on Monday.
“The fact that Florida officials announced their intent to designate CAIR at their July 1 press conference, before regulations they now plan to issue have come into effect, shows their calculated and cruel plan to designate CAIR is not because it is in any way a threat to public safety, but because doing so suits their political agenda,” said Scott McCoy, deputy legal director for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
That organization, along with the ACLU, the ACLU of Florida, and two other legal groups representing CAIR and CAIR-Florida filed a lawsuit the day after DeSantis’ press conference, legally challenging that designation.
That case is now in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida in Tallahassee. On Monday, attorneys for the state said in a legal filing that they could not yet provide a timeline for when regulations to allow the designation to be legal would be final, so attorneys representing the state and CAIR will report again to the court on July 22.
DeSantis has been attempting to name CAIR a domestic terrorist for eight months. His executive order to that effect in December was immediately challenged by CAIR, and a federal judge in March issued a temporary injunction blocking that designation.
Undaunted, the Florida Legislature passed a bill (HB 1471), later signed by the governor, empowering the head of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to label organizations domestic or foreign terrorist groups on evidence of specific criteria, including engagement in terrorist activity as defined by Florida law.
Those targeted organizations must be based in Florida and pose a threat to the security of Florida or the United States. The governor and Cabinet would then have to ratify the declaration. DeSantis said during his July 1 press conference that he and the Cabinet were not scheduled to meet this month and therefore he would have to call an emergency meeting to have that designation approved.
The Phoenix reached out to the FDLE last week to ask about the status of that meeting, but did not receive a response.
After DeSantis announced his intentions, attorneys for CAIR filed an emergency motion the next day asking the federal court to prevent the designation from going into effect. U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker denied the emergency filings, saying the matter required further briefing and evidence that Florida officials were following through on their threats.
In addition to CAIR, DeSantis said Antifa and the Muslim Brotherhood had also been recommended by FDLE head Mark Glass to be designated domestic terrorist groups, as well as more than 90 groups including (but not limited to) Cartel de Sinaloa; Tren de Aragua; the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran (IRGC); Cartel del Noreste; and Cartel del Golfo.
DeSantis has repeatedly based his assertion that CAIR is a domestic terrorist group by referring to its involvement in the Holy Land Foundation for Relief & Development (HLF) case going back to 2007, in which CAIR was listed as an “unindicted co-conspirator” along with 245 other individual and entities, as the Phoenix reported in May. Five leaders of the HLF were convicted on terrorism financing charges.
CAIR was accused of acting as part of a network designed to aid Hamas, although it was not criminally charged or indicted. The governor cited CAIR for alleged involvement with the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee (a designated foreign terrorist organization since 1997) or its offshoots.
CAIR Florida executive director Hiba Rahim said last week that the political climate right now has become dangerous for Muslims and specifically members of CAIR.
“I mean, in the last three days I had to report two violent threats to the police department here in Tampa because of the political climate that we see right now,” she told a crowd Friday morning in Tampa.
–Mitch Perry, Florida Phoenix
Deborah Coffey says
The only terrorists in Florida are Ron DeSantis and his cronies…cue Alligator Alcatraz and the over 200 people in the Palm Coast jail. They can’t declare CAIR a terrorist organization because like Trump with the 2020 “stolen election,” there is NO EVIDENCE at all. In fact, all the evidence is to the contrary.