Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said at a news conference Monday that about 50 immigrants were “lured under false pretenses” on the streets of San Antonio, placed in a hotel, flown in and “unceremoniously deported to Martha’s Vineyard,” a rich. vacation island, “for nothing but a photo-op.” San Antonio is the largest city in Bexar County. “What angers me the most about this case is that we have 48 people who are already on hard times,” Salazar said. “I think they became prey.” WATCHES | Sheriff announces investigation into claims luring immigrants: Salazar, a Democrat, said his move was unrelated to his party affiliation. “It’s wrong from a human rights point of view. What happened to these people is wrong,” he said. The sheriff did not promise that criminal charges would result from the proceedings, but said “the allegations we have heard [are] absolutely unpleasant.” A spokesman for Florida Gov. Ron DeSandis said the migrants were “more than willing to leave Bexar County after they left.” “Florida gave them an opportunity to seek greener pastures in a sanctuary jurisdiction that offered them greater resources, as we expected,” DeSantis communications director Taryn Fenske said in an emailed statement.
Used as “political pawns”: White House
Salazar said his office is working with advocacy groups and private attorneys representing victims and could coordinate with federal authorities as needed.
DeSantis, who is running for re-election in November and is considered a possible 2024 presidential contender, claimed credit for the two flights from San Antonio while criticizing Democratic President Joe Biden’s handling of a record number of transits along the US-Mexico border.
DeSantis joins Republican governors from Texas and Arizona in sending immigrants to Democratic-controlled cities, who have sent immigrants to cities like New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C.
DeSantis said last week that Florida paid to fly the immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard because many immigrants arriving in Florida are from Texas.
The Biden administration said Republicans are using immigrants as “political pawns.”
While details of how the flights were organized and paid for remain unclear, one migrant told Reuters he and his family were recruited outside a migrant resource center in San Antonio and promised housing, support for 90 days, help with work permits and English lessons . He said they were surprised when their flight landed on an island better known as a summer retreat populated mostly by affluent, liberal Americans.
As It Happens7:05 Florida governor used families as ‘pawns’ in Martha’s Vineyard stunt: Democrat
Dylan Fernandez, Democratic state representative for Massachusetts, tells AIH host Nil Köksal that Florida’s Republican governor is a “coward” for sending 48 immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard just to make a point.
U.S. border agents have made nearly two million immigration arrests through August at the U.S.-Mexico border this fiscal year, which began last October, according to government data released Monday.
They include a growing number of Cubans, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans and others who cannot be deported to Mexico under a public health order that has been in place since the start of the COVID pandemic, known as Title 42. Republicans generally favored keeping the order in effect, but many Democrats and refugee advocates said it encourages repeated attempts to cross instead of funneling them into the refugee system to have their claims heard.
An effort by the Biden administration to end Title 42 in May was blocked by the courts, at least temporarily, after legal action was launched by 24 heavily Republican states that opposed the plan.
The first months of the pandemic led to delays in court hearings, exacerbating conditions in an already strained US asylum hearing system. The backlog in immigration courts grew to more than 1.9 million cases, for an average processing time of more than four years per case, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
About 6.8 million Venezuelans have fled their homeland since a severe economic crisis hit the country of 28 million in 2014. Most have gone to nearby Latin American and Caribbean countries, including more than 2.4 million located in neighboring Colombia.
