In Florida, illegal aliens who commit crimes aren’t deported — they’re put to death

The state of Florida has been dogged in its determination to become the death penalty capital of the nation. It allows non-unanimous juries to impose death sentences. It allows prosecutors to seek such sentences for people convicted of sexual battery against children under age 12. And in 2025, it passed a law making the death penalty mandatory for any illegal alien convicted of first-degree murder.

Last month, a prosecutor in Lake County became the first to use that law as the basis of a capital prosecution. State Attorney Bill Gladson is seeking the death penalty for Shahidul Islam, a Bangladeshi national. He is an illegal alien, who was deported but returned to the U.S. While here, he allegedly shot and killed his sister-in-law.

If Gladson succeeds in getting a death sentence, he will have pulled off a MAGA double-header, combining the movement’s embrace of capital punishment and its hostility toward people who enter the country illegally.

Recall that in October 2024, President Trump made that connection when he said, “I’m hereby calling for the death penalty for any migrant who kills an American citizen or a law enforcement officer.”

And on the first day of his second term, he issued an executive order directing the attorney general to “seek the death penalty regardless of other factors for every federal capital crime … committed by an alien illegally present in this country.” His order also encouraged states........

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