A black, luxury SUV with tinted windows pulls into a parking lot across from a drab, two-story La Quinta motel that sits on the northwest edge of the 12-lane highway that loops around downtown San Antonio. A woman with straight fair hair got out of the rented Infiniti. He took the outdoor stairs, walked to the end and knocked on the doors of rooms 243 and 241, where a group of Venezuelan asylum seekers had spent five anxious days waiting. He brought them food and a message: They were being sent to Delaware. The bus to the airport would leave at 5 a.m. the next day – Tuesday, September 20 – he said, according to interviews with six migrants staying at the hotel. The migrants were unaware they were being drawn into an operation that bore striking similarities to an operation organized the previous week by agents of Gov. Ron DeSantis, which ended with 48 Venezuelan migrants landing on a Massachusetts island. Or that the trip to Delaware would never happen. They were also unaware that an unnamed source close to DeSantis would suggest to NBC News that a scheduled charter flight from San Antonio to Delaware — destined for an airport not far from President Joe Biden’s vacation home, according to flight records, and dominated on cable news on Tuesday — were canceled without explanation and then used to “punk” reporters and Democrats and keep the spotlight on immigration. If so, the immigrants interviewed by the Herald were the center of the joke. They thought they were going somewhere. Five days before she knocked on their motel room door, the woman, who never gave them her name, had recruited the immigrants to take part in an undercover operation to transport asylum seekers from Texas. He had approached them outside the San Antonio immigrant resource center and said he worked for an organization he did not name. He offered “stealth flights” to places he said could not be revealed until the last minute. But he promised that destination cities had more resources to help the men, who had just crossed the border after a perilous, months-long journey through the Panamanian jungle to Central America and finally across the U.S.-Mexico border to Texas cities struggling to accommodate thousands of people are coming to them. “He said there would be work. He said they would take us there and then there would be help,” said one of the migrants, Pedro Escalona, who had traveled to San Antonio from Venezuela. His asylum hearing was scheduled to take place next month in Washington, DC, and he hoped to get at least part of the way there. Mostly, he said, he just wanted to move on. The flight to Delaware was his best chance. There would be no flight. The migrants were informed the next morning that it had been cancelled. No explanation was given. Venezuelan immigrant Dairon Banachera boards a bus bound for the San Antonio Immigrant Resource Center after their flight from San Antonio to Delaware, arranged by agents working for Gov. Ron DeSandis, was canceled without warning. Banshera and at least 20 other migrants were stranded. Carl Juste [email protected] Escalona and about 20 others were shut out—again—with nothing. The previous week, contractors working for DeSantis, including a woman known only as “Perla,” had organized two charter flights to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, as part of a taxpayer-funded program to remove “unauthorized foreigners’ from Florida. The flights carried 48 migrants of Venezuelan origin, who said they had been promised jobs and assistance once they landed at their destination. Instead, they found that no one knew they were coming. Stunned islanders stepped forward to help them as the media circus grew. DeSantis said he’s recruiting Texas migrants for the flights because it’s easier to find them traveling together across the border than spread out across his state. Critics called it a cruel stunt — and a misuse of taxpayer money — aimed at promoting a governor expected to run for president. Flying doesn’t come without risks for DeSantis. On Monday afternoon, Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar, a Democrat, announced a criminal investigation into the Martha’s Vineyard charters. Later that night, around the same time Escalona and others were filling out waivers in their hotel rooms saying they were traveling to Delaware voluntarily, DeSantis was on Fox News talking to the host of the 9 p.m. Martha’s Vineyard Team. On Hannity’s prime time show, DeSantis said claims that immigrants had been tricked or forced onto the flights were “nonsense” and that things were much better on Martha’s Vineyard. He said they had been given packets of information about groups that could help them once they landed. DeSantis’ office did not immediately respond Wednesday when asked if Florida State was behind the latest recruiting efforts or if it had arranged the planned charter flight from San Antonio to Delaware that never happened. When shown pictures of various recruits, emigrants from the Martha’s Vineyard flights and the group he thought was bound for Delaware, they both recognized an image, an unknown woman with black hair. Those from Martha’s Vineyard also described a different woman known as “Perla” — the name used to book hotel rooms for Escalona and the others who thought they were going to Delaware, a source familiar with the investigation told the Herald of the sheriff. (Also, the Martha’s Vineyard team had been housed in a strange La Quinta, albeit in a different part of town.) In addition to announcing a tax relief proposal in an upcoming legislative session, Gov. Ron DeSantis took questions from reporters about flights of immigrants from Florida to Martha’s Vineyard at a press conference in Bradenton. Tiffany Tompkins [email protected] The Delaware-bound plane — owned by the same charter company hired by the state to fly the migrants to Martha’s Vineyard — was scheduled to fly to an airport near Biden’s vacation home, according to flight records posted online. The intended arc of the flight, with Biden as its final destination, followed a similarly politically-tinged pattern: Former President Barack Obama has a home on Martha’s Vineyard. The parallels were not lost on amateur aviation experts who on Monday tweeted that DeSantis was likely sending a team to Biden’s hometown. Throughout the next day, DeSantis and his office declined to comment, despite intense speculation. Christina Pushaw, director of rapid response for the DeSantis campaign, would write on Twitter that news of Delaware’s flight was “misinformation.” (Like the governor’s office, the DeSantis campaign did not respond to a request for comment.) After the flight was canceled, recruiters arranged for a bus to take Escalona and most of the others back from La Quinta to the immigrant resource center in San Antonio. But some migrants were never told the bus was leaving. They were stranded at the remote hotel, about 10 miles from the resource center, where migrants can get help and shelter for up to three days. Gavin Rogers, a pastor at a San Antonio church that helps immigrants, said Florida shouldn’t be asking its ministers to send immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard — or similar locations — without telling anyone they’re coming. “When you have this kind of malicious interference, it can be devastating to the lives of people seeking asylum,” said Rogers, of Travis Park Church and Corazón Ministries. “It makes it harder for nonprofits to do their jobs. These immigrants are in a desperate situation. We have to treat these people with dignity to get them to the places they really need to go.” “This is politically motivated human trafficking,” he added. “It’s tragic. The burden falls on people who do good, not on political actors.” All the immigrants interviewed by the Herald told similar stories. They were recruited by a woman in a black vehicle driving around the immigrant resource center and then taken to La Quinta to wait. Although the destination was uncertain, the plan was aimed at people who had no resources after making the long journey north from Venezuela. “We were out on the street and they offered us the chance to sleep in a bed. We thought they offered to help us,” said Deiker José, a 19-year-old Venezuelan who will have an asylum hearing in Miami next month but has no way to get there. (He asked that his last name not be used for fear of retaliation.) There were conditions for me to stay at La Quinta as part of the program. The recruiters warned him not to give out any information or talk about what they were doing. It would have been worth it, he said, if he had ended up in a state that provided more resources to immigrants. He just wanted to work, and the woman’s offer seemed to promise that opportunity. (Actually, asylum seekers are not allowed to work immediately.) Deiker José’s plan disappeared the moment the flight was cancelled. “I want to cry because I feel hopeless. I have nothing. How do I work? How do I survive?” he said. “These…
