State officials in Florida are suggesting that they may soon join Texas and Arizona and begin busing illegal immigrants in that state north to President Biden’s home state of Delaware.

Speaking on a Spanish-language radio program on Saturday, the Republican lieutenant governor of Florida, Jeanette Nuñez, called the wave of migrants arriving in Florida at the moment “worse” than the Mariel boatlift of 1980 that saw more than 125,000 Cubans land on South Florida’s shores in a matter of months.

“The Biden’s administration’s border policies aren’t affecting just the border states,” she said in an interview on WURN. “Even though we aren’t a border state, we are seeing an impact and we are going to continue seeing an impact.”

“The state doesn’t have jurisdiction over immigration, but we do have jurisdiction over the well-being of our residents and our communities,” said Ms. Nuñez, a daughter of Cuban exiles herself.  “That’s why the governor has worked with the legislature to secure funding to try and assure that those people who come here illegally … we are going to — quite frankly — send them to the state of Delaware.”

“To not do anything is not an option,” she added.

The comments raised eyebrows within South Florida’s powerful Cuban community, one of the most reliably Republican voting blocs in the country. A former Republican state lawmaker, Juan-Carlos Planas, called Ms. Nuñez’s comments “an insult to all the amazing families that I know that came through Mariel.”

Shame on her, Mr. Planas said on Twitter. “These Cubans that are coming are coming to work and live the dream that my parents lived.”

A professor at the University of Miami, Michael Bustamante, reacted to Ms. Nuñez’s comments with just one word: “Wow,” he said.

Democrats seeking to replace Governor DeSantis in November’s general election also blasted Ms. Nuñez’s comments as “wildly inappropriate.”

“Gov. DeSantis’s proposal to forcibly transport Cuban refugees out of Florida is reckless, inhumane and a betrayal of our deepest values as Americans,” Democratic congressman and gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist said on Twitter Saturday. “They deserve better than to be treated as his political pawns to curry favor with the extremist base of the Republican Party.”

Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, the other Democrat in the race, wrote, “Fleeing communism and tyranny to a state rich with family and culture only to be deported north by bus is cruel and wrong.”

The blowback prompted the spokeswoman for Mr. DeSantis’ campaign, Christina Pushaw, to clarify that only those migrants arriving illegally should be transported out of state, “no matter where they come from.”

“If someone came to Miami on a raft from Cuba to escape communist repression, that person is legal [because they are a] refugee,” Ms. Pushaw said on Twitter.

The governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, and his counterpart in Arizona, Doug Ducey, have made headlines in recent weeks by chartering buses to ferry some of the hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border to New York City and Washington, D.C. The Democratic mayors of those cities have asked for federal assistance to deal with the influx.

Record numbers of Cuban immigrants have been arriving in the United States this year, this time by land at the U.S.-Mexico border instead of by sea. The Border Patrol says that between the beginning of the fiscal year in October 2021 and the end of July, more than 180,000 Cubans have been processed at the border and released pending immigration hearings. Ms. Nuñez said the majority of those migrants — who enjoy preferential treatment by U.S. immigration authorities — intend to make their way to South Florida.

The current exodus, which dwarfs the Mariel boatlift and another wave in the mid-1990s, has been prompted by dire economic conditions on the island and a crackdown on dissent that began following a wave of protests last summer. Rolling blackouts, strict food rationing, and few job prospects have led to what Cuba observers have called a “stampede” out of the country. Many are fleeing to America via Nicaragua, which relaxed its visa requirements for Cuban nationals last year.