DeSantis announces CAIR Florida as a domestic terrorist group under new law

TAMPA — Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Wednesday that he has received a recommendation to designate the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR) Florida, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Antifa as domestic terrorist organizations.

He cited authority given to state officials through legislation had gone into effect just hours earlier.

The law (HB 1471) passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor in March, empowers the head of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to label organizations as domestic or foreign terrorist groups on evidence they meets specific criteria, including engagement in terrorist activity as defined by Florida law; is based in Florida; and poses an ongoing threat to the security of Florida or the United States.

The measure requires the head of the FDLE (now Mark Glass) to give written notice to the governor and the Cabinet of plans to declare the designation and gives the Cabinet seven days from the date of the receipt of written notice to approve or reject the designation.

Speaking during a press conference held at the Tampa Office of Statewide Prosecution less than 13 hours after the law went into effect, DeSantis said that the state has received recommendations to designate more than 90 groups as foreign terrorist organizations, 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.

This is not the first time DeSantis has attempted to designate CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood as domestic terrorist organizations. He did so in December via an executive order that drew a legal challenge by CAIR Florida a week later. In March, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker issued a temporary injunction blocking that designation (the Muslim Brotherhood never responded to the designation).

The DeSantis administration has appealed the temporary injunction in federal court. The governor predicted Wednesday that the state will win that legal battle but acknowledged, “We did need to have more of a legal structure to be able to add teeth to these designations.”

The recommendations now to go to the Cabinet for approval. The Cabinet includes Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson, Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia, and Attorney General James Uthmeier — all Republicans. Together, the governor and Cabinet appointed Glass.

DeSantis personally appointed Ingoglia and Uthmeier to their positions. There is no Cabinet meeting scheduled for this month, so the governor said he likely will set an emergency conference call sometime to approve Glass’s recommendation.

“I don’t think that’s going to be an issue,” he said of the coming vote.

The legislation granting state officials the powers to make such designations was approved mostly along party lines in both chambers of the Legislature earlier this year, with only Sen. Alexis Calatayud, a Republican from Miami-Dade County, joining Democrats in opposing the bill in the Senate.

Some Republicans outside the Legislature have expressed concerns about the bill, however.

“I think that when you give that much authority to an elected, or, in the case of this bill, sometimes non-elected officials, I think that’s very dangerous,” former Florida Panhandle state House Republican Joel Rudman told a Phoenix reporter on WMNF radio in Tampa in March.

“Now, my colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle, I’m sure they’re looking at this bill, saying, ‘These statutes. They can’t be warped. They can’t be abused. We have no intention of abusing them.’ But you have to understand that every bill you pass into law, there’s going to have some unintended consequences, and you have to be prepared for how those statutes are going to be interpreted when you’re not the majority party. … I think any constitutional conservative Republicans should have a problem with that bill.”

Pinellas County Democratic state Rep. Lindsay Cross wrote on X following the House vote that “placing unilateral power in the hands state officials to designate domestic terrorist organizations is unjust and un-American. I stood against this bill on the House floor and its abuse of executive power in Florida.”

A Phoenix reporter asked DeSantis Wednesday what he thought of Rudman’s qualms that conservatives might think differently of such a law if a Democratic administration was in place.

The governor rejected the idea.

“I think you saw how the Biden administration treated some of those groups, but this is something for public scrutiny,” he said. “Do people dispute that? I mean, clearly, they have goods on this in terms of their operations, not just in the United States but across the world in some of these instances. Are we going to say Tren de Aragua should not be designated? They are a transnational criminal terrorist organization. They’ve killed a lot of people. Are they going to say the IRGC should not be designated?”

“These are common-sense tools. It’s not saying, ‘Oh, some random civic group.’ It’s based on conduct.”

The evidence against CAIR

In the case of CAIR Florida, DeSantis said people should be educated about the CAIR’s involvement in the Holy Land Foundation for Relief & Development 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.

They were accused of acting as part of a network designed to aid Hamas, although they were not criminally charged or indicted. CAIR was cited for alleged involvement with the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee (a designated foreign terrorist organization since 1997) or its offshoots.

Speaking on behalf of CAIR,  Scott McCoy, the deputy legal director with the Southern Poverty Law Center, provided a written response.

“Regardless of what Gov. DeSantis thinks, the U.S. Constitution is supreme across our nation, including in Florida,” he said. “Gov. DeSantis is seeking to unilaterally silence a leading American civil rights nonprofit and punish those who support it. On CAIR’s behalf, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the American Civil Liberties Union, and our partners look forward to responding in court.”

In December, Hiba Rahim, interim executive director for CAIR Florida, said the DeSantis executive order does “not present facts, it does not cite investigations, it does not point to any criminal findings. It simply declares guilt by proclamation.”

She went on to say, “It does not matter whether you agree or disagree with our policies or our advocacy. What should concern every American is the implication of allowing a government official to apply criminal designations without due process. This is not how things work in America. In this country, allegations come with evidence and evidence is tested in court. And it is judges, not politicians, who decide what is lawful.”

Although CAIR was linked to Hamas in the Holy Land Foundation Trial, officials with the organization stress that it has never been charged with a crime. “Not once,” the group says on a page on its website set aside to address “conspiracy theories about CAIR.”

As far as the other groups mentioned in the FDLE recommendation, the White House designated Antifa as a domestic terrorist group and certain Muslim Brotherhood chapters as foreign terrorist organizations in 2025.

The new state law bans state and local governments from providing taxpayer funding, contracts, or other public support to designated terrorist organizations. Public colleges, universities, school districts, and other publicly funded institutions will be banned from using public resources to support or promote designated terrorist groups. Such groups may also be subject to being dissolved, and individuals who knowingly provide material support or resources could face criminal penalties.

The law’s Republican sponsors in the Legislature, Hillary Cassel from Dania Beach in the House and Erin Grall from Vero Beach in the Senate, frequently pitched the measure as “anti-Sharia law,” although in fact there were only a couple of sentences in the 28-page bill addressing religious law and only one sentence contains the word, “Sharia.”

DeSantis never mentioned Sharia Law once during his press conference.

The Cabinet vote

He did, however, mention that he suspects the three GOP Cabinet members, who are all on the ballot this fall, “will run probably saying, ‘Hey, we’re holding these groups accountable.'”

The Phoenix reached out to José Javier Rodríguez, the Democrat running for attorney general, and Annette Taddeo and Earle Ford, Democrats running for chief financial officer, to get their thoughts on the new law.

Ford calls the legislation, “anti-American and morally wrong.”

“The legislation appears deeply rooted in bigotry and religious targeting,” he told the Phoenix through Facebook Messenger.

“It represents a massive power grab designed to repress political opponents and marginalized communities. Beyond the racism and prejudice associated with it, the bill is a direct assault on constitutional norms. Allowing the government to label domestic individuals as terrorists without due process will not only chill free speech, but it will open the floodgates for further attacks on minority groups. While the motivations behind this are clear, if the bill is passed and upheld by the courts, it will establish a precedent that can be used to target other religions and races almost at will.”

A representative for Taddeo confirmed receiving the Phoenix’s message but did not provide an immediate response. The Rodríguez campaign did not provide an immediate response.