Last week, Pritzker signed the controversial bill, even though Republicans and major police groups were against it.
Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker said on X, which used to be Twitter, that Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis wasn’t “smart enough to be president” after DeSantis criticized a new Illinois law that lets people who aren’t citizens work as police officers.
“This man isn’t smart enough to be president,” Pritzker said Tuesday about DeSantis, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.
Pritzker also said, “I’m glad to have signed the bill that lets legal permanent residents and DACA recipients in Illinois work as police officers in their neighborhoods. Our military already does it, and it’s the right thing to do, no matter what lies the right-wing tells.”
“To the Left, citizenship is meaningless,” DeSantis said in a post on Monday.
“Illinois is now hiring people who are in the country illegally as police officers.”
The post was in reaction to DeSantis, who had harshly attacked Pritzker for signing Illinois House Bill 3751 into law, which means that being a police officer in the state no longer requires being a U.S. citizen.
The presidential hopeful also made a comparison between Illinois and his home state of Florida. He wrote, “In Florida, we did something about Biden’s border problem. We also value our volunteer police officers who serve and protect our neighborhoods.”
Related Posts
DeSantis said, “As president, I will restore American freedom. No undocumented person should be in charge of a U.S. citizen. The fact that this is even a question shows how bad things are in America.”
Last week, the governor of Florida joined other state and federal Republicans in criticizing Pritzker for signing the new Illinois law. It also ran into a lot of trouble from well-known police groups. NBC Chicago reported that Pritzker defended the bill at a press meeting on Monday. He said that it would only apply to people who are legally allowed to work in the United States and who are legally allowed to own guns. Pritzker also talked about the complaints from Republicans, saying that they are misleading the bill. “The right wing is always twisting things,” he said. “They posted it on Facebook and lied about it. Some people think that anyone can become a police officer. “That just isn’t true.”
The Democratic governor signed the law into effect on Friday, and it will go into effect on January 1, 2024, even though there was resistance to it. It was made because there aren’t enough police in Illinois and departments are having trouble finding and keeping officers.
HB3751 says that the bill “provides that a person who is not a citizen but is legally allowed to work in the United States under federal law is allowed to apply for the position of a police officer, subject to all requirements and limitations, other than citizenship, that other applicants are subject to.” It also says that non-U.S. citizens must be able to get, carry, buy, or otherwise have a gun in order to apply for the job.
According to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Act, non-citizens who are in the country can also apply for a job in law enforcement.
Pritzker had said before that he would vote for Joe Biden for president in 2024.
