Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar announced the investigation Monday night, saying his office believes the immigrants taken to the Massachusetts island on Sept. 14 were lured under false pretenses, which DeSantis denies. “What angers me the most about this case is that here we have 48 people who are already on hard times, right?” Salazar said at a press conference. “They are here legally, in our country. At that point, they have every right to be where they are. And I believe they were preyed upon.” Immigration attorneys who work with some of the asylum seekers told ABC News that the immigrants were given misleading information, including pamphlets, about the benefits they could receive in Massachusetts. A civil rights group representing at least three of the affected immigrants filed a class-action lawsuit against DeSantis and other Florida officials, claiming their clients were lured in under false pretenses as part of a “political stunt.” The governor defended the departure of immigrants as a protest against President Joe Biden’s immigration policies as border encounters remain high. DeSantis has repeatedly insisted that the immigrants who volunteered be moved to Martha’s Vineyard from Texas. “Why wouldn’t they want to go, given where they were?” he said during an appearance on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show Monday night. “It was in very, very bad shape.”
What potential violations are being investigated?
Salazar said Monday that his office believes an immigrant from Venezuela received a “bird-dog fee” to lure about 50 immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard, where they would be promised jobs and a better life. “There is a strong possibility that laws were broken here in the state of Texas in Bexar County,” Salazar said. However, he declined to reveal any specific statutes he believes may have been violated at the federal, state or local level. Immigrants stand outside St. Andrew’s Church in Edgartown, Massachusetts, September 14, 2022. Ray Ewing/Vineyard Gazette via Reuters He also did not identify any suspects. “We do have the names of some of the suspects involved that we believe are persons of interest in this case at this point, but I’m not going to release those names,” he said. “To be fair, I think everyone on this call already knows what those names are, but suffice it to say, we’re going to open this case.” “We will find out to what extent the law can hold these people accountable,” he added.
Attorneys say the DeSantis flyers were misleading
Attorneys representing immigrants who flew to Martha’s Vineyard via two chartered planes told ABC News that the information they were given before the trip was misleading because the immigrants are not technically refugees. These people are seeking asylum but have not yet obtained that status, the lawyers said. Millions of Venezuelans have fled the country since 2014, hoping to escape political turmoil and economic strife. US relations are strained with the country – which has for years chastised US sanctions imposed in opposition to the country’s president – and Venezuelans are usually exempt from expedited deportation under Title 42, a Trump-era policy that used to quickly deport immigrants because of the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ivan Espinoza-Marigal, a top lawyer representing many of the immigrants, told the ABC that most of the immigrants are on humanitarian parole and therefore not entitled to the benefits outlined in the pamphlet they received. “Only people who have already received refugee status are eligible,” American Immigration Council Policy Director Aaron Reichlin-Melnick told ABC News. “Asylum seekers do not receive any federal assistance and cannot obtain a work permit until at least six months after applying for asylum.” DeSantis has pointed to brochures given out by a vendor working with the state of Florida to transport the immigrants as evidence that they were not misled about where they were going or what would be available to them once they arrived. “They all signed consent forms to go,” he told Hannity. “And then the vendor that does this for Florida provided them with a packet that had a map of Martha’s Vineyard, it had the numbers for various services in Martha’s Vineyard, and then it had numbers for the overall services in Massachusetts that handle immigration and refugees .” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis speaks after the midterm primary election during the “Keep Florida Free Tour” in Tampa, Florida, August 24, 2022. Octavio Jones/Reuters, FILE Rachel Self, an immigration attorney who helps immigrants who have arrived on Martha’s Vineyard, said the map in the brochures was “ridiculously simple” and contained information on how immigrants could change their address with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services ( USCIS) when they relocated. “This is particularly troubling as anyone with even the most basic understanding of the immigration process knows that USCIS was not the agency that immigrants were supposed to register their addresses with and has nothing to do with their cases in any way.” , Self said. Typically, immigrants who are granted humanitarian release and want to apply for asylum are scheduled for mandatory court hearings in locations where they have declared they have family or in courts closer to where they were processed by immigration authorities. That means immigrants who unknowingly or under false pretenses went to Martha’s Vineyard risk missing those court dates, which could lead to speedy deportation. “The pamphlet is full of lies about this particular group of people. Essentially misrepresentations made to further the illegal scheme,” Self, one of the lawyers, told ABC News.
A class action lawsuit was filed against DeSantis
The group Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR) filed a federal civil rights lawsuit Tuesday against DeSantis, Florida Transportation Secretary Jared Perdue “and their accomplices” over what the lawyers called a “fraudulent and discriminatory” plan to send emigrants to Martha’s Vineyard. without the proper resources. The group filed the lawsuit on behalf of at least three affected individuals who claim they were “targeted and induced” to board the planes under false pretenses. The lawsuit alleges DeSantis and others targeted immigrants released from shelters and promised them job opportunities, education for their children and immigration assistance. Lawyers say in the lawsuit that the immigrants were not told they were going to Martha’s Vineyard before landing. The lawsuit alleges that once the planes landed, the people who had worked to put the migrants on the plane “disappeared” and left them to realize it was all a ruse. “The defendants manipulated them, deprived them of their dignity, deprived them of their liberty, bodily autonomy, due process, and equal protection of the law, and impermissibly interfered with the federal government’s exclusive control over immigration in furtherance of an unlawful purpose and a personal political agenda,” the group said. The complaint also alleges that money spent to transport the plaintiffs was improperly used from the federal State Coronavirus Financial Recovery Fund, which is authorized only for uses related to COVID-19. LCR is seeking “compensatory, emotional distress and punitive damages.” ABC News has reached out to DeSantis’ office and the Florida Department of Transportation for comment on the lawsuit.
What DeSantis’ team says
Taryn Fenske, communications director for DeSantis, responded to the Bexar Sheriff’s Office investigation in a social media post Monday. “Immigrants are more than willing to leave Bexar County after being enticed to cross the border and ‘fend for themselves.’ [Florida] provided an opportunity for sanctuary status [with] resources, as expected – unlike the 53 who died in an abandoned truck in Bexar County in June,” Fenske tweeted. DeSantis during his appearance on Hannity called the accusations that immigrants were cheated “nonsense.” He promised additional business to send immigrants to so-called “sanctuary jurisdictions,” saying last week that he plans to use $12 million from the state’s relocation program for more transfers. “These immigrants were treated horribly by Biden. They were hungry, homeless, had no chance. The state of Florida — it was voluntary — offered transportation to sanctuary jurisdictions,” DeSandis said at a news conference Tuesday. doubled down on his comments he made to Hannity.
Lawmakers weigh in
Members of Congressional leadership on Tuesday waded into the ongoing debate over moves by DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott last week to move immigrants to cities across the U.S. House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries criticized both men during a press conference Tuesday on Capitol Hill, arguing that GOP governors needed to “stop acting like human traffickers.” (Abbott and DeSandis defended their actions as showing the cost and scope of caring for immigrants — a reaction to the border policies of Biden and Democrats.) But Jeffries said: “They are putting politics over people in the most blatant way possible.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell expressed his support for the Republicans’ actions, saying he “thought it was a good idea” to send the immigrants to blue states. Although not by name, McConnell defended DeSantis and Abbott, telling the Senate they were just giving Biden and Democrats “a small, small taste” of what border state governors have been grappling with for years. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre dismissed the idea that GOP leaders were…
