A few days ago, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis flew two planeloads of migrants from Texas to the Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard, the latest political stunt by GOP officials to draw attention to the political live wire of immigration. DeSantis, who is laying the groundwork for a presidential run in 2024, was obviously trying to stir up his far-right base, but his stunt may have backfired on him by drawing attention to why and how he is using taxpayer money to deliver migrants that are not even located in his state to a faraway blue state. It’s one thing to round up migrants who find themselves stranded in your state and bus them out of state, as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott recently did by delivering two busloads to Vice President Kamala Harris’ residence in Washington, DC. the other day. That’s a heartless political stunt as well and not his first — he’s also sent busloads of migrants to Chicago, New York and previously to DC as part of his campaign against the Biden administration’s policies on immigration. But at least Abbott can argue that he was trying to lighten his state’s burden of caring for the immigrants who slip in from Mexico to Texas. What is DeSantis’ rationale? The migrants he flew — at considerable public expense — to Martha’s Vineyard were not even in Florida. They had no idea they were going to a small island enclave that is ill-equipped to handle 48 stateless people — the one shelter on the island is only equipped to take up to 15 homeless folks — and officials on the Vineyard had no idea they were coming. They apparently rose to the occasion — with residents giving the migrants food and shelter and a church in Edgartown housing them for a few nights. But the larger question no one seems to be asking is: was DeSantis’ political stunt a misuse of state funds?
I must point out here that federal immigration officials were not involved in this fiasco. The migrants rounded up for the Vineyard flights were mostly Venezuelans who had either been released from federal detention (to await their asylum hearings) or had come in illegally and eluded federal authorities up to that point. According to this New York Times article, some of the migrants were approached by a well-dressed woman at a McDonald’s in San Antonio, Texas (across the street from a shelter). She gave them gift cards and then offered to fly them to Massachusetts for sanctuary. They were put up in an airport hotel — at Florida taxpayers’ expense — and then flown on private planes a few days later to the Vineyard.
In a perverse kind of way, DeSantis did these 48 migrants a favor; they will no doubt be well taken care of in Massachusetts. As one immigration lawyer noted, these kind of political stunts do draw attention to the dearth of housing and resources for desperate immigrants who are trying to escape political upheaval and starvation (in Venezuela, for instance) or gang violence in their countries of origin (thinking here of Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador). What they don’t do, in my mind at least, is make me think DeSantis is anything but a corrupt and feckless politician intent on grabbing the Republican nomination for President in 2024. He’s up for re-election as governor this fall and I hope the good citizens of Florida keep his flagrant misuse of state funds in mind when they vote in November!
