Gov. DeSantis welcomes Americans evacuated from Israel at Tampa airport
Gov. DeSantis speaks on Americans evacuated from Israel
The first of several flights chartered by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to rescue Americans in Israel landed Thursday morning at the Tampa International Airport. The rescues come as the country’s conflict with Iran intensifies. DeSantis hosted a press conference after greeting a flight arriving from Israel in the early hours of Friday morning in Tampa.
TAMPA, Fla. - The first of several flights chartered by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to rescue Americans in Israel landed Thursday morning at the Tampa International Airport.
The rescues come as the country’s conflict with Iran intensifies. As of Thursday morning, the Florida Division of Emergency Management says Florida has rescued more than 160 Americans from Israel.
Americans return home from Israel
What we know:
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis hosted a news conference in the early hours of Friday morning at the Tampa airport to speak on the Americans evacuated from Israel amid the rising conflict with Iran.
DeSantis has chartered several flights to Tampa, with the first flight arriving just before 7 a.m. on Thursday.
The U.S. State Department issued a level four do-not-travel advisory for Israel on Monday, the highest travel warning possible.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at a news conference on Friday morning at Tampa International Airport.
The Americans fled from Israel to Cyprus on a cruise ship earlier this week. From there, the Florida Division of Emergency Management helped coordinate flights.
Many of the flights will bring around 1,500 Jewish Americans on Birthright Israel trips home through the Tampa airport. Birthright Israel funds trips to the country largely for young Jewish adults.
The nonprofit Grey Bull Rescue is also working with the state of Florida to rescue Americans. They say they conducted 222 missions on Wednesday alone.
‘There was a need for help’
What they're saying:
"This is probably the most challenging and logistically difficult mission that the Florida Department of Emergency Management has done," DeSantis said. "All of a sudden, to have this happen, you're really in no man's land. And so, we understood there was a need for help."
Josh Hammer, a Newsweek editor and a South Florida resident who was on one of the rescue flights, spoke about what he witnessed in Israel before evacuating.
"You're essentially living on pins and needles for the bombs to go off," Hammer said. "And then you have basically 90 seconds or two minutes to take – in our case, our 6-month-old baby – and just run to the bomb shelter."
Israel and Iran continue to trade strikes
Israeli and Iranian forces are continuing to trade war missile attacks, leaving massive destruction in their wake. Israel was hit by a new wave of Iranian missiles on Thursday, with a major hospital in the south sustaining "extensive damage," according to officials.
What's next:
State officials say evacuation flights remain ongoing. DeSantis said organizers are working "around the clock" to bring Americans back safely.
DeSantis and Florida Sen. Jay Collins, R- Tampa, urged Americans in need of evacuation from Israel to fill out the evacuation assistance form from Grey Bull Rescue on the state’s Division of Emergency Management’s website.
Sen. Collins wrote on X earlier this week that he was on the way to Israel to help with evacuation efforts.
War between Israel and Iran intensifies
The backstory:
The conflict between Israel and Iran has escalated significantly in recent months, marked by a series of direct and indirect attacks.
Israel launched attacks on the heart of Iran's nuclear and military structure last week. The ongoing military and intelligence operation raised the potential for all-out war between the countries and propelled the region, already on edge, into even greater upheaval.
Israel had long threatened such a strike, and successive American administrations had sought to prevent it, fearing it would ignite a wider conflict across the Middle East and possibly be ineffective at destroying Iran’s dispersed and hardened nuclear program.
In a second round of attacks, sirens and explosions, possibly from Israeli interceptors, could be heard booming in the sky over Jerusalem early Saturday. The Israeli military urged civilians, already rattled by the earlier wave of missiles, to head to shelter.
Israel’s paramedic services said 34 people were wounded in the barrage on the Tel Aviv area, including a woman who was critically injured after being trapped under rubble. In Ramat Gan, east of Tel Aviv, an Associated Press journalist saw burned out cars and at least three damaged houses, including one where the front was nearly entirely torn away.
U.S. ground-based air defense systems in the region were helping to shoot down Iranian missiles, said a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the measures.
Israel launches strikes at Iran
Israel Defense Forces launched a sweeping strike on Iran following months of attempted, and seemingly failed, nuclear negotiations.
What is President Trump saying about the attacks?
Big picture view:
On Thursday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that President Donald Trump would decide whether the US will join the Israel-Iran conflict in the "next two weeks."
Previously, Trump had declined to say if he had made any decision.
"I may do it, I may not do it," he said. "I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do."
Trump will decide on attacking Iran in next 2 weeks
President Donald Trump's Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt hosted a press briefing on Thursday afternoon at the White House. At the event, Leavitt said that based on the "substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place" with Iran in the near future, he will make his decision "whether or not to go" in the next two weeks.
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The Source: This story was written based on information gathered from previous reporting and shared by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in a news conference on June 20, 2025.