Florida’s DeSantis Sued for Flying Migrants to Martha’s Vineyard

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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was sued for sending planeloads of immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard, with the migrants claiming they were duped into making the trip with vouchers for free fast food and promises of employment and housing.

About 50 migrants from Venezuela near shelters in Texas were targeted by people pretending to be “good Samaritans” offering humanitarian assistance, including $10 McDonald’s certificates, according to the proposed class-action complaint filed Tuesday in Boston federal court.

DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, both Republicans, have been sending thousands of people north – more than 10,000 from Texas alone – to Democratic-led cities including New York, Washington and Chicago, saying those places should help bear the brunt of President Biden’s immigration policies.

Two planes sent by DeSantis landed on Martha’s Vineyard on Sept. 14, and the next day two buses chartered by Abbott arrived near Vice President Harris’s home in Washington.

Now, officials in Biden’s home state of Delaware are preparing for the arrival of a plane transporting undocumented migrants from Texas.

The lawsuit was filed by Alianza Americas, a group of organizations assisting immigrants, a day after a sheriff in Texas said he would opened a criminal investigation of who had “lured and transported” migrants in his state to Martha’s Vineyard.

DeSantis’s communications director, Taryn Fenske, said Tuesday the relocation of the immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard was done on a “voluntary basis.” Florida gave them a “fresh start in a sanctuary state and these individuals opted to take advantage of chartered flights to Massachusetts,” she said in an emailed statement.

Alianza Americas claims Florida’s governor violated constitutional protections of due-process rights and against unreasonable seizures.

After the migrants were induced to board the planes, they weren’t free to leave, and they suffered “severe emotional distress” while being used to make a political point, according to the complaint.

“It is a serious complaint with allegations of constitutional violations and other misconduct that are supported in the law,” said Denise Gilman, director of the immigration law clinic at the University of Texas at Austin.

Florida paid $615,000 for private chartered planes, at a cost of $12,300 per passenger, telling the migrants they were flying to Boston or Washington, which was “completely false,” according to the complaint.

Instead they landed on Martha’s Vineyard in the evening, without food, water, shelter or anyone knowing about their arrival, according to the suit. The island off the Massachusetts coast best is known as a tony haven for presidents and wealthy vacationers.

Florida representatives did not answer alarmed phone calls from the migrants wanting to learn what had gone wrong, according to the complaint. “But nothing had ‘gone wrong.’ Instead, the scheme worked exactly” as DeSantis’s team intended, according to the complaint.

The suit also names Jared W. Perdue, secretary of the Florida Department of Transportation, as a defendant. The agency disburses the $12 million in funding that DeSantis is using to relocate migrants, according to the suit.

(c) 2022, Bloomberg · Joel Rosenblatt 


6 COMMENTS

  1. Wow Only two weeks in America after allegedly fleeing for their lives and they are already so Americans that they are busy with law suits over “severe emotional distress” .

    When do they start doing the jobs no one else wants to do and helping grow our economy like the immigrant advocates claim they do?

  2. According to the Boston Globe today, the MA state flag in the pamphlet given to the migrants was an altered version created by a GLBT liberal and uploaded free on the internet.

    Fishy on that.

  3. Watch – they’ll win in the courts. It’s high time to investigate judicial appointments and individual judges altogether. Too many are hacks , activists , and help destroy our culture.

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