A group of 48 mostly Venezuelan immigrants that the state of Florida airlifted to Martha’s Vineyard last week sued Gov. Ron DeSantis over the “fraudulent and discriminatory scheme.” Local officials as well as California’s governor have called for a criminal investigation of Florida’s governor into the flights, which are said to be based on false claims of aid to entice migrants to board them. Delaware agencies, meanwhile, are bracing for another possible flight that is set to land Tuesday near President Joe Biden’s beach home in Rehoboth Beach. The plane, however, appears to be delayed, according to flight tracking services. Government agencies and community groups are preparing humanitarian aid. Florida Gov. Ron DeSandis said at an event Tuesday that he “cannot confirm” that another flight of migrants is leaving Texas for Delaware, although he criticized President Biden, who he said has “created a crisis” at the border. Gov. DeSantis and his aides and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott have defended sending immigrants to Democratic-led states and cities in protest of what they call the president’s “open borders” policy.
Basic points
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Ron DeSantis admits immigration isn’t a big problem in Florida
Ron DeSantis has become the face of the anti-immigrant movement with his immigration flights in Florida, but there’s something a little strange about them. Mass immigration is not a big factor in Florida, and the flights themselves began by picking up migrants in Texas, a state that has much more contact with cross-border migration than Mexico. “We’re not seeing mass movements of them into Florida,” Mr. DeSantis said Tuesday at an event, describing a slow flow of immigrants coming “in twos” to the Sunshine State. According to the most recent Border Patrol numbers, the border sector that includes Florida was about 400 times less busy than those in the Southwest. Josh Marcus21 September 2022 01:10 1663717844
Immigrants on Martha’s Vineyard flight were not in US ‘illegally’, despite DeSantis’ claims
Ron DeSantis falsely claimed that the immigrants his administration airlifted into liberal areas were criminals. In fact, they were exercising rights protected by US and international law by seeking asylum in America. As news broke last week of Mr. DeSantis’ flights of immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, his communications directors defended the policy, saying it was a legitimate use of state resources to “transport illegal immigrants to sanctuary destinations.” However, the 48 migrants on the plane, many of them Venezuelan, were in the country legally. As Alex Woodward notes in his excellent piece on the flights, they had already presented themselves to immigration authorities and were awaiting the asylum process. After arriving at the border and turning themselves in to the authorities, migrants seeking asylum must undergo a “credible fear check” to determine whether returning to their home countries could expose them to further persecution or threats. After screening, they are released pending an asylum hearing. At this point, near the San Antonio Immigrant Resource Center, the group of immigrants targeted by people ostensibly working through Governor DeSantis’ operation were sent to Massachusetts. Critics argue that it is Florida’s governor himself who broke the law. Immigrants on the Martha’s Vineyard flight filed a class-action lawsuit against the Republican on Tuesday, alleging they were lured onto the flights out of the country with false promises of work, housing support and other services. “Plaintiffs have lived lives caused by violence, instability, insecurity and abuse of trust by corrupt government officials that most Americans could hardly imagine,” the lawsuit states. “They fled to the United States in a desperate attempt to protect themselves and their families from gang-sponsored, police- and state-sponsored violence and the suppression of political dissent. To put it simply, plaintiffs, and the class of similarly situated individuals they seek to represent, are vulnerable in a way and to a degree that almost defies verbal description.” Local officials in Texas are investigating whether Mr. DeSantis’ plan broke any laws.
Texas sheriff to investigate Florida for transporting immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard
Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar says the migrants “have every right to be where they are and I believe they were robbed” California Gov. Gavin Newsom, meanwhile, argued that it amounted to kidnapping and urged the federal Justice Department to investigate.
DeSantis could be charged with kidnapping after transporting immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard
California Gov. Gavin Newsom is asking the Department of Justice to “investigate whether the alleged fraudulent solicitation would support kidnapping charges under applicable state statutes.” And here’s Alex’s piece for more information on the process.
Immigrants were given brochures with false promises of help. Who made them?
People seeking asylum in the U.S. were given official-looking documents before boarding flights to Massachusetts booked by Gov. Ron DeSandis, but the agency designated to them was not. Lawyers are demanding answers, reports Alex Woodward Josh Marcus21 September 2022 00:50 1663716094
Does Joe Biden have an “open borders” policy? Not really.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSandis blamed the Biden administration’s supposed “open border” policies for an immigration “crisis” that requires immigrants to fly to other parts of the country just to give beleaguered border towns a break. “Biden cannot defend his open border policies,” Mr DeSantis said at an event on Tuesday. “It is doing enormous damage to our country.” It’s a scary picture the Republican has painted, but it’s far from complete. For one thing, the borders of the Biden administration look a lot like those under the Trump administration. President Biden, for example, is still building the border wall along the US-Mexico border, a project that remained unfinished — “open,” perhaps, to borrow Mr. DeSantis’ phrase — at the end of the Trump administration. The Trump administration’s controversial Stay in Mexico program, which forced asylum seekers to wait on the Mexican side of the border while their applications were processed, was in effect until June. And Mr. Biden continued to use Mr. Trump’s Title 42 order to tremendous effect. The policy, a supposed pandemic measure cooked up by immigration opponent Stephen Miller, reportedly over the CDC’s protests, allows immigration officials to deny entry to asylum seekers before they even enter immigration proceedings. According to a Pew analysis, the Biden administration has already carried out the vast majority of the roughly 2.2 million Title 42 deportations that have taken place since the policy took effect. Deportations this year under the health care rule, which the Biden administration renewed in August despite earlier plans to abandon it, appear on track to surpass the 1.07 million done in 2021, according to Border Patrol statistics. Patrol. Border officials also note that, in addition to all the usual, nuanced factors of U.S. immigration, political instability beyond American shores is a huge factor. “The failed communist regimes in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba are driving a new wave of immigration across the Western Hemisphere, including a recent increase in encounters at the U.S. Southwest border,” CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus said in a recent enforcement briefing. And even during the Trump administration, tough policies like Remain in Mexico and Title 42 haven’t stopped border crossers from trying their luck again and again to reach the U.S., the analysis concluded, and the Border Patrol . “There is never going to be a point of militarization at which the US can reach the border that would completely stop all these flows,” Jessica Boulter of the Migration Policy Institute told The Independent at the end of the Trump administration. “The environmental and security push factors that push people to leave, as well as the economic push factors, especially during and after the pandemic – there will always be reasons to migrate.” Josh Marcus21 September 2022 00:21 1663714738
How “historic” is the border situation? Here’s what the evidence says.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSandis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott have both framed their highly controversial efforts to airlift and bus migrants to liberal states as a way to raise awareness of the “historic” crisis at the US border. It’s a crisis, they say, caused by the Biden administration. Indeed, a record number of people crossed the US-Mexico border this year. So far in fiscal year 2022, more than 2.1 million immigrants have been encountered at the border, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. That’s already more than the 2021 total, which just topped previous records from the 1980s and early 2000s, the Pew Research Center noted in an analysis. For what it’s worth, the record year of 2021 also included the final months of the Trump administration, but you’re unlikely to hear much mention of that from party leaders like Mr DeSantis and Mr Abbott. As we’ll explore in an upcoming blog post, however, pinning these record numbers solely on Joe Biden greatly distorts the picture of what’s really going on. Josh Marcus September 20, 2022 11:58 p.m 1663713044
White House says Florida is using immigrants as ‘pawns’ to score points for DeSantis
The White House on Tuesday continued to criticize Florida Gov. Ron DeSandis for supporting migrant flights that send asylum seekers from Texas and Florida to liberal locations across the…
