Charge Republican Governors With Human Trafficking And Immigration Law Violations (Updated)

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The Texas Tribune reports, Fight over border security escalates after governors send migrants to Kamala Harris’ home, Martha’s Vineyard:

Gov. Greg Abbott’s state-funded program to bus migrants to cities run by Democrats reached a national fever pitch on Thursday, with buses dropping people off outside of Vice President Kamala Harris’ D.C. residence.

What started in the spring as a [performance politics] publicity stunt to draw the attention of the White House has caught fire, with other Republican officials in Arizona and Florida following suit. On Wednesday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis set off a national frenzy after chartering two flights of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, an affluent vacation spot in Massachusetts. Meanwhile, Texas has ramped up its own busing efforts, sending more migrants to other Democrat-run metropolitan areas where local officials say their social services are being pushed to the limits.

The latest moves by Abbott and DeSantis this week have triggered outrage among immigration rights’ groups and Democrats who have accused the Republicans of engaging in human trafficking and treating migrants like “human cargo” to score political points.

Early Thursday morning, Abbott gleefully took credit for sending between 75 and 100 migrants to the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., where Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff reside. The move was in apparent retaliation for her comments on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in which she called the border “secure,” stoking conservative anger nationwide.

“We did [send them],” Abbott said to Lubbock radio station KFYO. “She’s the border czar, and we felt that if she won’t come down to see the border, if President [Joe] Biden will not come down and see the border, we will make sure they see it firsthand. … And listen, there’s more where that came from.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

But Abbott said his office was not responsible for the two chartered planes that carried approximately 50 migrants from San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard on Wednesday.

DeSantis claimed credit for the planes leaving Texas. He told NPR and other outlets that it was part of the state’s program to relocate migrants to a “sanctuary destination.” It’s unclear whether the migrants in the planes had any connection to Florida. The Florida Legislature set aside $12 million for the state’s migrant relocation program.

https://twitter.com/justinjm1/status/1570567747943436289?cxt=HHwWgsDU_fTC48srAAAA

“Our office has had conversations with Governor DeSantis and his team about supporting our busing strategy to provide much-needed relief to our overwhelmed and overrun border communities,” said Renae Eze, Abbott’s spokesperson. “Though we were not involved in these initial planes to Martha’s Vineyard, we appreciate the support in responding to this national crisis and helping Texans. Governor Abbott encourages and welcomes all his fellow governors to engage in this effort to secure the border and focus on the failing and illegal efforts of the Biden-Harris Administration to continue these reckless open border policies.”

DeSantis’ office did not respond to a request for comment.

These white supremacist Southern crackers aren’t doing anything new. This same performance politics publicity stunt was done by Southern segregationists in the early 1960s.

UPDATE: MSNBC’s Alex Wagner has the history that Gov. Ron DeSantis does not want taught to white kids about their grandparents’ segregationist racism.

Migrants landing in Martha’s Vineyard told reporters that they didn’t know where they were, that they thought they were going to different destinations or that they were lured on to the planes with the promise of being able to get work papers. Local officials said they were given no advanced warning about the migrants but would be providing resources to support them.

“The Department of Justice needs to investigate Governor DeSantis for using fraud and deception to lure people out of state only to abandon them without fulfilling his false promises. Same for Greg Abbott,” U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, said in a tweet.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, tweeted that the state is “fully capable of handling asylum seekers” but that “exploiting vulnerable people for political stunts is repulsive and cruel.”

The League of United Latin American Citizens, the largest Hispanic civil rights organization in the U.S., held a news conference near the Harris residence Thursday afternoon and claimed two of the migrants on the buses had to be hospitalized after they arrived. One was a person with diabetes who went into shock and another was a baby who experienced health issues, according to Domingo Garcia, the group’s national president.

“These are human beings, these are fellow Christians,” Garcia said in front of the Apostolic Nunciature in Washington, D.C. “They are being treated like human cargo. I think it’s time that President Biden and Congress and the Senate provide humanitarian relief.”

Garcia said the migrants were being helped by a religious nonprofit.

To date, Abbott’s office says it’s transported at least 10,000 migrants to Washington, D.C., New York and Chicago — self-proclaimed sanctuary cities run by Democrats. Records show Texas has spent at least $12 million to find the rides. The trips are under the umbrella of his more than $4 billion border security initiative dubbed Operation Lone Star, intended to curb border crossings.

Republicans frequently refer to those taking the trips as “illegal immigrants,” but many of them are asylum-seekers who have been allowed to enter the country pending the outcome of their legal cases. The program initially started with bus trips to Washington, D.C., as a way to antagonize Biden over his border policies and the increase of migrants entering into Texas. But Abbott, who is running for his third term as governor on a border security platform, expanded the busing program to additional cities as he has leaned in to national attention he’s received for stoking fights with Democratic mayors, who are complaining about migrants straining their city resources.

Those complaints play right into Abbott’s favor, as he’s called those Democrats hypocrites and noted that Texas’ border communities are bearing the same strain felt by the larger metros.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement Wednesday that the city’s safety net for receiving the migrants “is nearing its breaking point.” Adams suggested the city, which has a “right to shelter” law, may need to rethink how it can continue to support migrants upon arrival.

“In this new and unforeseen reality, where we expect thousands more to arrive every week going forward, the city’s system is nearing its breaking point,” Adams said. “As a result, the city’s prior practices, which never contemplated the busing of thousands of people into New York City, must be reassessed.”

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser declared a public health emergency last week to deal with the migrants, creating a new government office in the process to coordinate their arrivals, which will cost an initial $10 million.

Leaders of those cities have complained that Texas is not coordinating with them or giving them notice of when buses will arrive. Advocates and aid workers who support migrants along the border, meanwhile, have said that despite the political motivations driving the initiative, Abbott is actually providing many of the migrants a useful service by offering them free and safe transportation to their final destinations.

In May, Arizona started busing migrants from the state to Washington, D.C., which has cost the state $3 million in its first three months, according to AZFamily. El Paso, a Democrat-led city, sent a bus of 35 migrants to New York in late August.

While the migrant transportation policy elicited a polarized response nationally, recent polling from Texas suggests a majority of the state’s voters support the governor’s initiative to bus migrants to other parts of the country. According to the polling, 51% approved of the policy and just 35% opposed it.

Texas has long been one of the worst states in the country. It has for the past couple of decades now been a White Christian Nationalist Republican authoritarian model for what Republicans want to do to the rest of the country.

Documentarian Ken Burns compared Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ actions on Wednesday as that of an authoritarian leader. Ken Burns says DeSantis’ actions come right from the ‘authoritarian playbook’:

“It’s the abstraction of human life,” said Mr Burns while appearing on CNN to promote his new documentary, The U.S. and the Holocaust. The film focuses on America’s response to the Holocaust before, during, and after the Second World War.

“It’s basically saying that you can use a human life that is as valuable as yours or mine and to put it in the position of becoming a political pawn in somebody’s authoritarian game,” the famed documentarian said to CNN’s Jon Berman.

“This is coming straight out of the authoritarian playbook, this is what’s so disturbing about DeSantis is to use human beings to weaponise human beings for a politicla purpose,” he said.

“This is not the actions of a person participating in a Democratic process in which there’s an exchange of ideas this is about punishing political enemies,” he added.

Here’s a shocker: “The Ron DeSantis of The West” is not on board with this performance poiitics publicity stunt. Kari Lake ‘not a fan’ of Ron DeSantis sending plane of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard:

Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is speaking out about Gov. Ron DeSantis sending two planes of undocumented immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts on Wednesday.

Lake, appearing on Tucker Carlson’s White Power Hour on the Fox News Channel, said she disagreed with the Florida Governor’s stunt.

“I’m not a fan of it, Tucker,” Lake said. “I mean, we’re just taking people here illegally who shouldn’t be here, moving them further inland.”

Because Lake wants to deport migrants back to their country of origin, including lawful asylum seekers.

It wasn’t all criticism from Lake, however.

“I actually get a kick out of it,” Lake told Carlson. “Watching these liberal Mayors just throw their hands up and say ‘We can’t handle it.’ Because it’s life every day for us in these border states.”

Because The Cruelty Is the Point:

Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, black voters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them.

Lake’s criticism comes just weeks after DeSantis went to Arizona to campaign with her after she won the Primary with Donald Trump’sendorsement.

Lake, a former newscaster, extolled DeSantis as a chip off the Trump block while saying being called “DeSantis of the West” was a major compliment.

“He’s got BDE. I call it Big DeSantis Energy. He’s got the same kind of BDE President Trump has,” Lake said, introducing DeSantis as a Governor who brought “Trump strength” to Florida.

By the end of the evening, DeSantis was promising to send National Guard members to stand sentry at the Mexican border in cooperation with Lake if she were elected Governor.

Lake said on Fox News Wednesday that if elected, she would send National Guard troops to the border but did not reference DeSantis’ offer.

Both should lose their races in November if Americans still have a conscience and a soul.

UPDATE: Former U.S. attorney Glenn Kirschner argues that Govs. Abbott and DeSantis committed kidnapping by “inveiglement” (deception), 18 U.S. Code § 1201. Kidnapping is also a predicate offense under federal and state RICO statutes, and their was cooperation between these two governors.

UPDATE: h/t Daily Kos.

Entire thread can be read on Twitter, or here.




5 thoughts on “Charge Republican Governors With Human Trafficking And Immigration Law Violations (Updated)”

  1. Ellvia Díaz at The Republic writes, “Practically speaking, Gov. Ron DeSantis is a human trafficker”, https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/elviadiaz/2022/09/20/govs-ron-desantis-greg-abbott-doug-ducey-human-traffickers-migrants/8065698001/

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is laughing off a criminal investigation over his human trafficking by apparently either staging – or duping the media with – another migrant drop-off.

    This time the stunt destination isn’t the posh Martha’s Vineyard, the playground of mostly rich and famous Democrats.

    The new landing spot is reportedly a small Delaware town where President Biden has a vacation home.

    The stunt is just that – political bait for an already boiling electorate that sees no moral quandary in exploiting people fleeing the dictatorships of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba.

    DeSantis is using this for maximum political effect

    DeSantis chartered a plane – at expense to taxpayers of about $12,600 per migrant –but it hadn’t landed in Delaware at the time of this writing.

    Did he have a change of heart, sensing political fallout? Doubt it. Did he hesitate over the Texas sheriff’s criminal investigation? Not a chance.

    If anything, the Republican governor was probably taking his time pulling the strings of this puppet show for maximum attention.

    Whether the latest flight makes it or not, DeSantis’ human trafficking to Martha’s Vineyard is a depravity.

    And Javier Salazar, the Texas sheriff of Bexar County, didn’t hesitate to try do something about it.

    A Texas sheriff is at least trying to stop him

    Salazar on Monday opened a criminal investigation of DeSantis’ flights to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts – a moved hailed by pro-immigrant activists and some Democrats who also want to pursue civil inquiries into the flights.

    “The Florida Governor’s continued use of deception, fraud and false promises to lure people, including children, onto planes from San Antonio for out-of-state destinations should be prohibited,’’ Rep. Joaquin Castro said on Twitter.

    “I’m glad Bexar County has opened a criminal investigation into these actions. I suspect legal advocates will ultimately file civil suit against DeSantis, the State of Florida, and every other entity or company who knowingly participated in this deceptive human trafficking,” Castro said.

    That’s all good, but DeSantis needs to be stopped now. Salazar at least had the guts to try to hold him legally accountable.

    On Tuesday, lawyers presenting some of the migrants filed a class-action lawsuit against DeSantis and other state officials, alleging the whole thing was a “premeditated, fraudulent, and illegal scheme centered on exploiting this vulnerability for the sole purpose of advancing their own personal, financial and political interests.”

    While that plays out and other legal scholars look into the legality of DeSantis’ transports or human trafficking, Florida residents should lead the way in calling him out, especially the Republican Latinos who boast about caring for people under totalitarian regimes.

    What DeSantis did should be criminal

    DeSantis used false pretenses to lure the 48 migrants to the planes that took them to Martha’s Vineyard. That should be criminal.

    Most of them had fled Venezuela with hopes of reaching Florida, home to many compatriots. Instead of reaching their destination, DeSantis dumped them on Martha’s Vineyard just to make a political point.

    Promising migrants jobs to lure them onto planes makes them crime victims, Tallahassee-based immigration attorney Elizabeth Ricci suggested to NPR.

    The 48 migrants were quickly whisked to a military base where they have access to lawyers and are likely to get all the legal help they need to stay in the U.S.

    That doesn’t excuse DeSantis.

    How are Abbott, Ducey not human traffickers?

    In fact, it potentially makes him a human trafficker – the exact thing he and fellow Republican Govs. Greg Abbott of Texas and Doug Ducey of Arizona criticize.

    DeSantis’ stunt is an escalation of the Republican war against Democrats over border security and immigration – and they’re using migrants as weapons in that war.

    Abbott has bussed more than 10,000 migrants to Democratic-led cities and dropped them on the sidewalks to fend for themselves, while Ducey has bussed nearly 2,000. All at taxpayers’ expense.

    The governors say they aren’t forcing anyone onto the buses, or onto the planes in DeSantis’ case.

    That may be technically correct, but deceiving or lying to poor refugees fleeing the brutality of dictators is morally reprehensible. Are these governors really any better than the “coyotes,” the human traffickers they often criticize?

    Speak up, Latinos. This is reprehensible

    Americans in general and Latinos in Florida in particular should be disgusted with these stunts. Florida is a Republican stronghold where Cubans and Venezuelans and other Latinos wield a lot of power.

    Notably, most of the asylum seekers showing up now at the U.S.-Mexico border are from Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

    DeSantis and the rest of Republican clan don’t care about the plight of these refugees. All they want is to use them as human weapons to score political points in this year’s midterm election.

    Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, who’s usually first in line to lash out at Venezuela’s and Cuba’s brutality, is crickets now. His silence over DeSantis’ stunt using mostly Venezuelans is deafening.

    What’s worse than that?

    That too many ordinary Americans remain complicit or hail the use of asylum seekers as political pawns – even those fleeing the brutality of dictators America condemns.

  2. UPDATE: The New York Times reports, “Criminal Investigation Is Opened After Migrant Flights to Martha’s Vineyard”, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/19/us/migrants-marthas-vineyard-texas-investigation.html

    A county sheriff in Texas announced on Monday that he had opened a criminal investigation into flights that took 48 migrants from a shelter in San Antonio to the island resort of Martha’s Vineyard last week.

    Sheriff Javier Salazar of Bexar County, which includes San Antonio, said that he had enlisted agents from his office’s organized crime task force and that it was too early to determine which laws might have been broken. But he said it was clear that many of the migrants had been misled and lured away from Texas to score political points.

    [A] migrant appears to have been paid to recruit other Venezuelan migrants, who have been crossing the southwest border in greater numbers, from the area around a migrant resource center in San Antonio, Sheriff Salazar said. The migrants were “lured under false pretenses” with promises of work and a better life, he added.

    [This is kidnapping by “inveiglement” (deception), 18 U.S. Code § 1201.]

    [In] interviews with reporters, they described being approached in San Antonio by a well-dressed woman who introduced herself as Perla; she handed out gift cards for fast-food restaurants and offered to take them to “sanctuary” in Massachusetts.

    “They had a right to walk around the streets just like you and me, and they had a right not to be preyed on and played for a fool and transported halfway across the country, just for the sake of a media event or a video opportunity,” Sheriff Salazar, a Democrat, said. “That’s a tragedy.”

    Sheriff Salazar said he had not ruled out the possibility of working with state and federal officials on the criminal case. His office has yet to interview the migrants, who are now on the East Coast, and has communicated mainly with one of the lawyers representing them, he added.

    The sheriff, who has been a constant critic of the Republican response to illegal immigration, stressed that his decision to open the investigation was not politically motivated.

    “It’s doing the right thing,” he said.

  3. Judd Legum t Popular Infirmation has “The smoking gun in Martha’s Vineyard”, https://popular.info/p/the-smoking-gun-in-marthas-vineyard

    Popular Information has obtained documentary evidence that migrants from Venezuela were provided with false information to convince them to board flights chartered by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R). The documents suggest that the flights were not just a callous political stunt but potentially a crime.

    [In] the aftermath of the flights, a key issue of contention is whether the migrants boarded the flights freely and voluntarily. While DeSantis and his administration repeatedly referred to the migrants as “illegal immigrants,” the migrants surrendered to immigration officials after crossing the border into Texas. They are now seeking asylum from the repressive authoritarian regime in Venezuela. The migrants are legally permitted to remain in the United States while their cases are being considered by immigration courts.

    So these migrants are able to voluntarily travel within the United States. But many of the migrants told reporters that they were misled about the nature of the flights. Several migrants told NPR they were told the flight was going to Boston, not Martha’s Vineyard. According to the migrants, a woman who identified herself as Perla also said that, if they traveled to Boston, they could receive “expedited work papers.”

    The allegation that the migrants were misled is legally significant. It would mean that the flights were not just heartless, but potentially criminal. If the migrants were misled, the scheme to transport them to Martha’s Vineyard could constitute fraud, false imprisonment, or kidnapping. “There is absolutely the possibility of both civil and criminal liability if people were lied to about where they were going [or] what they were going to get when they got there,” lawyer Susan Church told Politico.

    [P]opular Information, however, has obtained a brochure that was provided to the migrants who ultimately agreed to the flights. It was provided to Popular Information by Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR), a Boston-based legal organization that represents 30 of the migrants. The brochure says that migrants who arrive in Massachusetts will be eligible for numerous benefits, including “8 months cash assistance,” “assistance with housing,” “food,” “clothing,” “transportation to job interviews,” “job training,” “job placement,” “registering children for school,” “assistance applying for Social Security cards,” and many other benefits.

    None of this, however, is true.

    Matt Cameron, a Boston-based immigration attorney, explained that the benefits described in the brochure are resettlement benefits available to refugees who have been referred by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and authorized to live in the United States. These benefits are not available in Massachusetts to the migrants who boarded the flights, who are still in the process of seeking asylum.

    The migrants who boarded the planes “absolutely do not have access to cash, housing, and other resettlement benefits which are provided through both federal funds and partnerships with faith-based [organizations],” Cameron said.

    The brochure, which is crudely designed to resemble a government document, does not explain that these benefits described are only available to specially designated refugees.

    According to some of the migrants, the benefits described in the brochure were also promised verbally by Perla to lure them onto the planes chartered by DeSantis. “[T]hey told us that they were going to help us with the rent, to get a job, that was the only option left to us,” one migrant, Eduardo Linares, told the Texas Tribune. (Linares ultimately declined to board the flight.)

    There could be real consequences for migrants who were convinced to board the flight under false pretenses. Seeking asylum is an “often years-long process through immigration courts that requires [migrants] to check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement periodically.” Some migrants now find themselves thousands of miles away from where they need to report for their next check-in. A missed appointment can “be detrimental to their case.”

    On Saturday, LCR wrote to U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins and Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, calling on them to open a formal investigation. “Individuals, working in concert with State officials, including the Florida Governor, made numerous false promises to LCR’s clients — including of work opportunities, schooling for their children, and immigration assistance — in order to induce them to travel,” LCR said in the letter. “[T]hose who had induced our clients to travel under these false pretenses disappeared, leaving our clients to learn that the offers of assistance had all been a ruse to exploit them for political purposes.”

    • MAGAts are the ones who cheered child separation at the border as a deterrent.

      If they’ll torture children like that, then of course they’re abusing human beings for political gain now.

      These mini-T4ump’s seem to have missed the point of the massive beating T4ump took in 2020.

      The country doesn’t want stupid and mean.

  4. Latino voters have been trending Republican in Florida in recent years. Ron DeSantis’ cruel publicity stunt using migrants as political pawns may have cost him the Latino vote.

    Politico reports, “‘Huge mistake’: DeSantis’ migrant transports could undercut support in South Florida”, https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/17/desantis-migrant-transports-south-florida-00057337

    Gov. Ron DeSantis’ decision to transport mostly Venezuelan migrants to Martha’s Vineyard earlier this week could hurt the Republican governor in November with a key constituency that the GOP has sought to win over.

    The move by DeSantis dominated the radio and television airwaves in South Florida — where large swaths of Hispanic voters live. One Spanish radio host loudly denounced the move and even compared DeSantis’ actions to that of deceased Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, who relocated Cubans in the early ‘60s.

    Democrat Charlie Crist, who is challenging DeSantis, on Saturday rushed out a new digital ad targeting Hispanics and the Venezuelan community as part of a six-figure buy pounding DeSantis over his attention-getting move.

    “From a Miami perspective, it’s a huge mistake,” said state Sen. Annette Taddeo, a Democrat challenging incumbent Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.). “All these Republicans — including my opponent — historically talk about socialism and communism and that we are standing up to these horrible dictators. The migrants are fleeing exactly what Republicans say they are fighting against.”

    “I have friends and neighbors who fled Venezuela’s brutal dictator, and to cruelly treat anyone in that spot like a political pawn or fundraising gimmick, is simply repulsive,” said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) whose own district includes a large contingent of Venezuelan Americans.

    [D]eSantis’ hard line on immigration is not new. He pushed to pass a law to ban “sanctuary cities” or communities that refused to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. The governor had been talking about busing migrants to other locations — including Biden’s home state of Delaware — since late last year.

    DeSantis also convinced the Republican-led state Legislature to include $12 million — which is coming from interest earned off the billions provided to Florida through the American Rescue Plan — in its new budget to relocate migrants. Taddeo pointed out that she tried to amend an immigration bill this past session to include language that would prohibit the state from transporting migrants if they were trying to flee a communist or socialist country.

    “I tried to warn them,” said Taddeo, who contended that many South Florida Republicans are remaining relatively quiet about what the governor did.

    “They know this is absolutely toxic in Miami-Dade County because it’s showing their true colors,” she said. “All this outrage about socialism and communism — it’s all fake.”

    Note: The media seems to forget that DeSantis was elected governor in 2018 by less than one-half percent of the vote (32,463 votes) after a machine recount, because the race was so close. DeSantis governs as if he was elected by a landslide and has a mandate for his far-right extremism. Florida elections are always close. Charlie Crist was a popular two term governor. Crist could very well win a tight race, disappointing the media villagers pushing DeSantis for president in 2024.

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