As the debate over moving asylum seekers from border areas to sanctuary states heats up, Democrats in Congress are contemplating starting at least two probes into Florida Governor Ron DeSantis sending a migrant flight to Martha’s Vineyard.
According to a Politico reporter, Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, is writing a letter to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) requesting details about DeSantis’ air transportation of migrants.
The Mississippi Democrat said that an unnamed committee may launch an investigation into how Desantis’ travel to the affluent island off the coast of Massachusetts was paid for.
The White House is charging DeSantis with ‘political hoax’ and ‘adding to the havoc’ in the country’s immigration system after a media frenzy erupted at a tiny Delaware airport on Tuesday, but no migrants actually arrived.
This week, a class action complaint was brought against DeSantis in the District of Massachusetts over the question of whether the governor used deceptive means to entice the migrants to Martha’s Vineyard.
The Florida Republican is facing a lawsuit and possible House investigations after he sent an aircraft carrying several migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, where former President Barack Obama has a house.
The same private jet was reportedly being used by DeSantis to transport more migrants this week to the airport nearest to President Joe Biden’s holiday home in Rehoboth Beach, but the plane never showed up at Delaware Coastal Airport on Tuesday.
At the little airport in Delaware on Tuesday, a sizable crowd of media, volunteers, local and state government officials, even clergymen, and onlookers assembled.
Karine Jean-Pierre, the press secretary for the White House, begged Republicans to “engage with us on solutions” for immigrants.
In her appearance with MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Tuesday, she said, “What you’re witnessing from Governor DeSantis is barbaric.” It is not resolving the issue. It is not a remedy. It is producing uncertainty and mayhem.
DeSantis and other Republicans, according to Jean-Pierre, are indulging in “political ploys and utilising human people as part of a political swindle.”
It comes after a lawsuit was filed against DeSantis accusing him of “exploiting” a group of migrants he flew to Martha’s Vineyard. DeSantis responded by calling out “opportunistic activists” who participated in “political theatre.”
The governor is accused of having “designed and executed a premeditated, fraudulent, and illegal scheme centred on exploiting [the migrants] for the sole purpose of advancing their own personal, financial, and political interests,” according to the class action lawsuit, which was filed in the District of Massachusetts.
According to Jean-Pierre, President Donald Trump’s staff left the present government with a “decimated immigration system.”
DeSantis orchestrated the flight of 50 migrants to the island off the coast of Massachusetts, sparking a political uproar about immigration.
However, his administration is now defending his conduct, saying that before the migrants boarded a chartered jet for the island, they were all forced to sign permission papers.
His spokesperson told FOX News that the lawsuit is nothing more than “political theatre” being staged at the expense of undocumented immigrants by “opportunistic activists.”
In a statement, Taryn Fenske said that if the activists invested even a small portion of their time and energy at the border, “perhaps some accountability would be brought to the Biden Administration’s reckless border policies that entice illegal immigrants to make perilous and frequently deadly journeys through Central America and put their lives in the hands of cartels and coyotes.”
She provided a permission letter that each of the migrants was supposed to sign before they boarded the aircraft and indicated that the trip to Martha’s Vineyard was taken “on a voluntary basis.”
The papers, which are available in English and Spanish, were reportedly taken from Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who began taking migrants by bus to New York City and Washington, DC, in the beginning.
“I promise to keep the donor or its intended agents immune of any liabilities arising out of or in any way related to any injuries and damages that may occur during the agreed transport to areas outside of Texas until the ultimate destination in Massachusetts,” the document reads.
The activists didn’t care about the immigrants, who were homeless, hungry, and abandoned, according to Fenske.
These people chose to utilise chartered aircraft to Massachusetts because Florida’s policy allowed them a new start in a sanctuary state, she said.
The fact that Martha’s Vineyard requested the Massachusetts National Guard to transport them off the island within 48 hours was upsetting.
Three immigrants and one immigration group filed the complaint.
They said in a court document that the migrants left crime-ridden Venezuela and quickly handed themselves in to immigration officials after crossing the border. According to them, they have permission to stay in the country up to their court procedures.
Additionally, the migrants claim that people involved in DeSantis’ plan prowled about an immigration shelter in Bexar County, San Antonio, Texas, “pretending to be good Samaritans and giving humanitarian aid.”
They reportedly provided $10 McDonald’s gift cards as a means of gaining confidence.
The Doe Defendants then made fraudulent promises and assurances that, in exchange for Plaintiffs and class members agreeing to board aircraft bound for other states, they would upon their arrival get jobs, housing, educational opportunities, and other such aid.
The complaint document states, “Next, the Defendants placed class members for free in hotels, isolated away from the migrant centre, and from the chance of true good Samaritans discovering how the class members were being exploited.”
After that, the DeSantis administration spent $615k on two privately chartered aircraft, or $12,300 each person, to fly migrants to Martha’s Vineyard.
According to the defendants, the DeSantis administration informed them that they would be travelling to Boston or Washington, D.C.
According to the complaint, “Defendants misrepresented to Plaintiffs their actual goal of enabling travel, which was to make a political statement about federal immigration policy.”
The migrants want DeSantis to cease “causing immigrants to travel across state boundaries by deception and misrepresentation,” as well as compensatory, emotional anguish, and punitive damages, as well as compensation for their legal expenses.
DeSantis retaliated earlier on Tuesday when New York Democrat Rep. Hakeem Jeffries referred to him as a “human trafficker” because of the prank.
“I didn’t hear a peep out of those individuals while Biden is flying these people all over the fruited plain in the middle of the night!” Republican from Florida remarked.
Tuesday morning, his office issued a statement endorsing their choice:
Immigrants who had been abandoned, destitute, and “left to fend for themselves” had been more than eager to depart Bexar County. As we anticipated, Florida granted them the chance to go for better pastures in a sanctuary state with more resources. Unless the Massachusetts National Guard has abandoned these people, they have received lodging, food, clothes, and additional opportunities to prosper after being unfairly lured into the country.
Governor Charlie Baker said that the billionaire’s enclave was “not designed to offer sustainable shelter” for the refugees, so Massachusetts called in the National Guard to help. The migrants were then transported to a military facility in Cape Cod.
With this political gambit, DeSantis took a leaf out of Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s playbook. Thousands of migrants were transported by Abbott’s buses to liberal sanctuary cities like Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C.
DeSantis was supposed to deploy some migrants to Delaware on Tuesday, but the plan never materialised. Biden said when asked about the proposal, “[DeSantis] should come visit.” Our coastline is stunning.
Additionally, Biden defended the unprecedented amount of immigrants that entered the country when he was president. Over 2 million immigration arrests were made by U.S. officials along the southern border in the last 11 months, which is a record high.
The president claimed that the large number of immigrants was a result of individuals fleeing authoritarian governments like Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela.
Less and less immigrants are arriving from Mexico and Central America. It’s a very different situation. Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua are now under my control, and it would be absurd to send them back to those countries. We’re collaborating with Mexico and other nations to see if we can halt the flow, so you could send them back and keep them. That is the distinction, he remarked.
According to Customs and Border Protection, migrants from Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba made up more than one-third of those detained at the border last month, a 175 percent increase over August of the previous year.