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Florida Attorney General Uthmeier talks his priorities if elected to stay in his position and more
By News Service of Florida
February 28, 2026 at 5:00 AM EST
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier is running to stay in his position. He'll face Steven Leskovich in the Republican primary in August.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier was appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis exactly one year ago. Since then, Uthmeier has been at the forefront of the state’s illegal immigration enforcement program, traveling the state and highlighting Florida’s “law and order” priorities.
He will be running to stay in the Cabinet position this fall and will face Steven Leskovich in the Republican primary in August.
Prior to becoming Attorney General, Uthmeier was DeSantis’ chief of staff.
The News Service of Florida has five questions for Uthmeier, edited for brevity and clarity.
It’s your one-year anniversary as attorney general. What was the hardest obstacle you’ve had to tackle so far?
The greatest challenge is how big our state is, how diverse our population is. Our Office of Attorney General has a dozen offices spread all over the state. When it comes to supporting law enforcement, combatting illegal immigration and enforcing the rule of law, we’ve got to cover some ground.
ALSO READ: Florida targets states over immigrant truck drivers
So our team has been up and down the state, spending hours and hours in the car and on the freeways, making it to every single corner of the Sunshine State. It’s been a challenge but a huge honor and a blessing, and we’ve accomplished a lot in just a year.
What accomplishment are you most proud of and why?
I’m most proud of what we’ve done to take down child predators. This office has always cared about protecting children and going after predators, but we’ve repurposed a lot of resources and staff and have made this our No. 1 priority.
Over the last year, we’ve arrested over 1,400 child predators. Many of these dangerous people are getting to kids through the internet and social media platforms like Snapchat, Roblox, Fortnite and Instagram.
So we’ve gone after, civilly and in some cases criminally, several of these companies that we believe are unnecessarily endangering our kids, allowing predators to pretend to be young people themselves to deceive other children into communicating, and in the worst cases, leading to abuse. We’ve fought that, we’ll keep fighting it with everything we’ve got.
If elected for another term, what are your priorities?
No. 1 is continuing to go after child predators; that’s going to remain our No. 1 priority.
We also just recently opened a China office that focuses on data protection issues. We have over a dozen companies that we’re investigating that have a back door either in medical health monitoring devices or security camera devices where personal data, private data, is going over to China, our foreign adversary, also in some cases making it to the Chinese military.
ALSO READ: AG Uthmeier's concern about predators on Roblox isn't happening in a vacuum
This is not just a consumer privacy issue, but it is a tremendous national security issue that we need to be combatting with everything we’ve got. We’re going to continue to focus on big tech and AI and areas where people are being abused, where children are unnecessarily being put in harm's way.
At the end of the day, we will always stand by law enforcement. We’ve got the lowest crime rates we’ve ever had in Florida, that’s not going to change under my watch.
How important is it to add state prosecutors to the special risk retirement plan?
This is very important. I hope it happens this year. If it doesn’t, we’re going to continue to beat the drum. We have to take care of our prosecutors. These are the individuals who go toe-to-toe with dangerous criminals in the courtroom. They make the case before the jury to send these people away for a long time.
At the end of the day, when criminals get released, the last person they often remember is the prosecutor, that’s the face they remember. These people put their lives in danger. They devote long hours on the job, they don’t have the highest paycheck in the world, but they do it because it’s a calling, and our rule of law and our public safety depend on it. We need to treat them as law enforcement, that’s what they are.
We need to give them more and earlier retirement and show them we have their backs. If we don’t have prosecutors, we can’t enforce the law, and we can’t put the bad guys away.
How did you come up with the name and the idea of 'Alligator Alcatraz?'
I was sitting with our team, and we saw (President Donald Trump) and (U.S. Attorney General Pam) Bondi talking about reopening the original Alcatraz off the coast of California. That can only house like 30 or 40 people, I don’t think it could actually be resurrected.
But it gave us this idea. We’d been talking to Miami for years now about this old, abandoned airport that still had many flights a day going for law enforcement and training purposes, but it’s completely surrounded, over 30 square miles, by the Everglades.
It creates its own natural security barrier. We realized this would be a wonderful location to send people who have been detained and are flagged for deportation. There’s a 2.5-mile runway that was built back in the ‘60s, the largest in the state, which makes it an easy-in, one-way out location for deportations.
He will be running to stay in the Cabinet position this fall and will face Steven Leskovich in the Republican primary in August.
Prior to becoming Attorney General, Uthmeier was DeSantis’ chief of staff.
The News Service of Florida has five questions for Uthmeier, edited for brevity and clarity.
It’s your one-year anniversary as attorney general. What was the hardest obstacle you’ve had to tackle so far?
The greatest challenge is how big our state is, how diverse our population is. Our Office of Attorney General has a dozen offices spread all over the state. When it comes to supporting law enforcement, combatting illegal immigration and enforcing the rule of law, we’ve got to cover some ground.
ALSO READ: Florida targets states over immigrant truck drivers
So our team has been up and down the state, spending hours and hours in the car and on the freeways, making it to every single corner of the Sunshine State. It’s been a challenge but a huge honor and a blessing, and we’ve accomplished a lot in just a year.
What accomplishment are you most proud of and why?
I’m most proud of what we’ve done to take down child predators. This office has always cared about protecting children and going after predators, but we’ve repurposed a lot of resources and staff and have made this our No. 1 priority.
Over the last year, we’ve arrested over 1,400 child predators. Many of these dangerous people are getting to kids through the internet and social media platforms like Snapchat, Roblox, Fortnite and Instagram.
So we’ve gone after, civilly and in some cases criminally, several of these companies that we believe are unnecessarily endangering our kids, allowing predators to pretend to be young people themselves to deceive other children into communicating, and in the worst cases, leading to abuse. We’ve fought that, we’ll keep fighting it with everything we’ve got.
If elected for another term, what are your priorities?
No. 1 is continuing to go after child predators; that’s going to remain our No. 1 priority.
We also just recently opened a China office that focuses on data protection issues. We have over a dozen companies that we’re investigating that have a back door either in medical health monitoring devices or security camera devices where personal data, private data, is going over to China, our foreign adversary, also in some cases making it to the Chinese military.
ALSO READ: AG Uthmeier's concern about predators on Roblox isn't happening in a vacuum
This is not just a consumer privacy issue, but it is a tremendous national security issue that we need to be combatting with everything we’ve got. We’re going to continue to focus on big tech and AI and areas where people are being abused, where children are unnecessarily being put in harm's way.
At the end of the day, we will always stand by law enforcement. We’ve got the lowest crime rates we’ve ever had in Florida, that’s not going to change under my watch.
How important is it to add state prosecutors to the special risk retirement plan?
This is very important. I hope it happens this year. If it doesn’t, we’re going to continue to beat the drum. We have to take care of our prosecutors. These are the individuals who go toe-to-toe with dangerous criminals in the courtroom. They make the case before the jury to send these people away for a long time.
At the end of the day, when criminals get released, the last person they often remember is the prosecutor, that’s the face they remember. These people put their lives in danger. They devote long hours on the job, they don’t have the highest paycheck in the world, but they do it because it’s a calling, and our rule of law and our public safety depend on it. We need to treat them as law enforcement, that’s what they are.
We need to give them more and earlier retirement and show them we have their backs. If we don’t have prosecutors, we can’t enforce the law, and we can’t put the bad guys away.
How did you come up with the name and the idea of 'Alligator Alcatraz?'
I was sitting with our team, and we saw (President Donald Trump) and (U.S. Attorney General Pam) Bondi talking about reopening the original Alcatraz off the coast of California. That can only house like 30 or 40 people, I don’t think it could actually be resurrected.
But it gave us this idea. We’d been talking to Miami for years now about this old, abandoned airport that still had many flights a day going for law enforcement and training purposes, but it’s completely surrounded, over 30 square miles, by the Everglades.
It creates its own natural security barrier. We realized this would be a wonderful location to send people who have been detained and are flagged for deportation. There’s a 2.5-mile runway that was built back in the ‘60s, the largest in the state, which makes it an easy-in, one-way out location for deportations.