Did Ron DeSantis break the law by sending migrants to Martha’s Vineyard?

Immigration attorneys say migrants were falsely promised jobs and expedited legal status. Officials suggested they were kidnapped. Legal analysts argue the stunt is a moral failure but likely not a crime, Alex Woodward reports

(AFP via Getty Images)

Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida took credit for putting a group of 48 migrants on planes out of Texas that landed, unannounced, on Martha’s Vineyard, leaving immigrant advocacy groups and attorneys scrambling to connect them with legal aid in their ongoing asylum cases.

But legal advocates and Democratic officials have pressed whether the governor’s politically motivated stunt – an attempted indictment of President Joe Biden’s immigration policies – was closer to a crime, after migrants said they were lured onto flights with false promises of jobs and expedited legal residency in the US.

Rachel Self, an immigration attorney in Boston, wrote in a statement that the migrants, most of whom fled Venezuela before they were detained in San Antonio, are “victims of kidnapping” and fraud eligible for nonimmigrant visas to protect them from deportation.

California Governor Gavin Newsom and Florida’s Commissioner of Agriculture Nikki Fried each called on US Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate, and the US attorney’s office in Boston also is working with the US Department of Justice to determine whether any crimes were committed.

On 16 September, after migrants departed from the island off the coast of Massachusetts to a larger shelter facility on the mainland at Cape Cod, Governor DeSantis defended his actions, claiming that the migrants signed release forms for “voluntary transportation they’re signing up for.”

He said migrants were “identified” as likely to come to Florida, where they would “impose a lot of cost on the community, so we’re trying to avoid that.”

Questions remain about Florida’s $12m programme and flight contracts

The governor did not clarify how migrants were identified in Texas as bound for Florida, or why the state was investigating cases several states away.

DeSantis said “there’s a bunch of stuff that’s gone into creating the infrastructure” as part of a state-funded programme designed to move migrants out of state.

But the budget language for the $12m programme suggests that the state would be transporting them out of Florida, not other states.

“We’re going to spend every penny of that,” Mr DeSantis told reporters on Friday.

State records indicate that Florida’s Department of Transportation paid $615,000 to an Oregon-based flight company with divisions in Florida earlier this month for a “relocation program of unauthorized aliens”.

“I’ve got $12m for us to use, so we’re going to use it. You’re going to see more and more,” the governor added. “I’m going to make sure we exhaust all those funds.”

The Independent has requested comment and clarification from the flight company in its role in Florida’s programme.

‘Criminal liability’ or a ‘moral crime’?

So much remains unclear about the migrants’ journey from Texas to Massachusetts and how Florida officials are identifying and collecting migrants in other states to be sent to so-called “sanctuary” states and cities.

But the widely derided maneuver mirrors other Republican governors’ attempts to bus migrants from their states to other parts of the US, an attempt to paint largely Democratic-controlled states and cities as hypocritical, and to protest what the American right has characterised as President Biden’s “open border” policy that facilities “illegal” immigration into the US.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has sent thousands of migrants to Chicago, New York City and Washington DC, spending more than $12m hiring buses to do so.

Arizona also has hired more than 40 buses, at a cost of roughly $3.5m, to send thousands of migrants to Washington.

After Governor Abbott bused migrants to Chicago this week, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker said he was reviewing “criminal liability” and suggested that the migrants did not “willingly” board.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot also suggested that the migrants were coerced or misled into believing that “the only option for them … is a free bus ride.”

Legal analysts and critics have suggested that such measures violate federal law that could hold individuals or entities criminally liable; “knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, transports, or moves or attempts to transport or move such alien within the United States by means of transportation or otherwise, in furtherance of such violation of law”.

While immigration attorneys and advocates have condemned what they see as clear provocation that exploits vulnerable people for political purposes, constituting a kind of “moral” crime, it is unlikely that it rises to a criminal violation.

“But it’s not clear to me, on these facts, that it’s more like human trafficking or like smuggling,” Boston University School of Law’s Sarah Sherman-Stokes told The Washington Post.

“Clearly, DeSantis is exploiting them for political gain, but I’m not sure that rises to the level of human trafficking,” she said.

University of Michigan Law professor Bridgette Carr told the newspaper: “Unfortunately, I can’t think of a law that says, ‘We can criminally charge you for being a jerk to vulnerable people for your own political gain.’ I wish we did.”

On 16 September, migrants were transported on a ferry from Martha’s Vineyard to a larger shelter facility with healthcare and legal aid in Cape Cod. (AP)

US Attorney Rachael Rollins in Boston said the agency is looking into the case and speaking with the Justice Department but did not yet have enough information to determine whether a crime was committed.

“Massachusetts isn’t the only place where this has happened,” she said in a statement. “We have several other sister communities, whether it’s DC, New York, California, where we’ve seen things like this. And we’re hoping to get some input from the Department of Justice about what our next steps might be, if any at all.”

Carlos Munoz reaches out to hug Larkin Stallings as migrants prepare to leave St Andrews Church in Martha’s Vineyard on 16 September. (AP)

Cambridge-area immigration lawyer Susan Church told the Boston Globe that migrants were “duped into getting onto the plane.”

“This is akin to kidnapping,” she said.

“Using human beings – families and children – as political pawns says far more about Governor DeSantis’s callousness and disregard for human life than it does about the people of Martha’s Vineyard,” according to Ms Self, the Boston immigration attorney. “He sent those planes here hoping to expose hypocrisy; he does not believe anyone when they say they care about people like migrants fleeing an oppressive socialist regime in Venezuela, because he himself cannot conceive of caring about them.”

A complicated legal immigration process

Whether any crimes were committed, the migrants’ legal journeys – beginning from their processing in Texas through their sheltering in Massachusetts – is just beginning.

A group of immigration attorneys joined the migrants on their way to Joint Base Cape Cod, a large facility better equipped to house migrants (including separate rooms for families) who will have access to healthcare, counseling and legal aid, according to Governor Charlie Baker’s office.

But sending groups of people across the country without any idea where they are going while navigating their asylum claims in immigration courts hundreds of miles away has created separate legal chaos.

Migrants seeking asylum for humanitarian assistance or protection after fleeing Venezuela were likely released from detention while awaiting their hearings before they were “shipped to a small community where resources have to get to them,” according to Matt Maiona, an immigration attorney in Boston and spokesperson for the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

“If such a political stunt were to be performed it would certainly be kinder and more humane to go to a city like Boston where these resources are more available,” he told The Independent on Thursday.

Immigration attorneys and legal services are working to determine the migrants’ status and asylum court venues. If they are based in Texas, immigration attorneys are likely to file motions to change the location closer to the Boston area or their destination in the US, if friends, family or opportunities are expecting them elsewhere.

“There’s no doubt that there’s a continued need for humanitarian aid and assistance,” Mr Maiona said. “Those are the folks who can help not only with getting through the process but also to adjust, get to court, have their case reviewed, because … it’s a complicated system.”

After tearful goodbyes and cheers from their warm reception in Martha’s Vineyard on their way to the mainland, one man told the Boston Globe that he believes “they don’t want immigrants in Texas and Florida.”

“However, human life is not a game,” he said.