As of September 14, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and other Florida officials imported roughly 50 Venezuelan migrants onto two airplanes and flew them out to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. Grand Old Party (GOP) governors did not inform local officials about the migrants arriving beforehand and even misinformed the migrants about their final destination. Instead, they took advantage of migrants who spoke little to no English and told them they would arrive in cities like Washington D.C. and Boston. 

About a week later, the undocumented immigrants from Venezuela filed a class action lawsuit against DeSantis. The lawsuit unraveled details regarding Desantis’ deception and the events that led up to the migrants arriving in unfamiliar territory. The plaintiffs fled Venezuela, a country that grew rampant in crime and civil unrest. When arriving at the border of the United States, migrants immediately surrendered to immigration officials as an act of desperation for a better country. However, associates of Desantis would soon take advantage of their desperation when the Venezuelans arrived at a migrant shelter in Texas. In this shelter, the associates gave them $10 McDonald’s gift cards and promised them employment and educational opportunities if they boarded a privately chartered plane.

Before arriving on the island, associates of Desantis gave migrants “shiny red folders” with official-looking materials, such as a brochure that listed refugee benefits that migrants could earn in Massachusetts. This brochure turned out as another example of misinformation, as it claimed resettlement aid for the migrants seeking asylum as well as promises of jobs and cash assistance. These same migrants lacked eligibility for any refugee benefits, and the Massachusetts Office for Refugees and Immigrants and other immigration services organizations did not prepare the misleading brochure. 

DeSantis remains far from the first GOP governor to do this, as Texas governor Greg Abbott and Arizona governor Doug Ducey also pushed migrants from Republican states to Democratic strongholds with no prior warnings. In this year alone, Abbott bused more than 10,000 migrants to predominantly liberal cities like New York and Washington D.C. in an attempt to combat the Biden administration. Under Biden’s immigration policies, over a million migrants avoided apprehension and entered the country illegally. In Biden’s first 100 days of office, he also stopped the construction of the southern border, which former Republican president Donald J. Trump advocated adamantly. As a result, GOP governors believe that America’s southern borders need stronger security and that liberals act “too soft” on immigration, and their political strategies went to the extent of sending migrants to vice president Kamala Harris’ house to prove a point.

“VP Harris claims our border is ‘secure’ and denies the crisis. We’re sending migrants to her backyard to call on the Biden Administration to do its job and secure the border,” Abbott said. 

As for Desantis, he intends to use every penny of the $12 million granted by state lawmakers on relocating migrants. The Florida governor claimed direct responsibility for spending $615,000 to transport them to Martha’s Vineyard but denies accusations that the migrants did not know their final destination. In fact, the GOP governor claims that migrants signed a waiver before boarding the privately chartered planes and officials provided them with maps of Martha’s Vineyard. Desantis currently leads the 2022 governor’s race for Florida while simultaneously leading former President Donald Trump as a republican presidential contender for Florida voters. 

“I feel like this was a display of different mindsets. Those who were sending the migrants away believed it would be a strategic political statement and that the mainly democratic area of Martha’s Vineyard would reject these migrants. The opposite happened. The migrants were almost immediately given refuge and treated civilly, instead of being toyed with for political gain. This was not a strategic political statement at all. It was a showcasing of human decency in the face of greed,” junior vice president Bianca Orfila-Molinet said.