In a stunt that aimed to raise questions about whether President Joe Biden is doing enough to counter illegal immigration, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) flew nearly 50 immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, a move that has some Democratic attorneys fuming with threats of litigation.
Rachel Self, an attorney on the affluent Massachusetts island, said on Sept. 15 that she is looking for potential legal avenues to sue the Florida governor, who commissioned taxpayer dollars to fly planes of immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard.
“We believe they are victims of kidnapping,” Self said in a Sept. 15 media interview, adding that she and other immigration attorneys from Lawyers for Civil Rights had mobilized to provide immigrants with legal representation after the incident.
TEXAS AUTHORITIES OPEN CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION INTO DESANTIS’S MARTHA’S VINEYARD IMMIGRANT FLIGHT
According to federal law, it is illegal to transport or attempt to transport immigrants, “knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact” that they are in the country illegally.
But legal experts have said that elected officials likely aren’t breaking any rules when they bus or fly immigrants who have been screened and released by Customs and Border Protection, so long as they are willingly accepting the travel offer.
Immigration experts contend the Biden administration and Republican governors are using the same legal justification to transport immigrants across the country, albeit with differing intent.
A 2017 analysis by the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild found that simply supplying transportation to a noncitizen is not a crime.
Similar immigrant relocation efforts have been accomplished by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), who has bused more than 7,000 noncitizens to Democratic-led cities such as Washington, D.C., New York City, and Chicago.
David Leopold, former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, advised Biden’s transition team on immigration matters. While he opposes Abbott’s decisions, he said that his actions do not constitute efforts to hide, employ, or get immigrants into a situation in which they are less likely to be discovered, according to Politifact.
Carlos Moctezuma Garcia, a lawyer in McAllen, Texas, and immigration expert, also contended the Office of Refugee Resettlement “regularly transports kids in custody.” “Greyhound transports migrants who have been processed. I don’t see how it would be illegal” for Abbott to also transport immigrants, he said.
Legal scholar Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University professor and law expert, claimed that if busing noncitizens is illegal, then “Biden would be the biggest coyote ever,” according to a Fox News interview.
“Was [DeSantis] kidnapping them? Was that human trafficking? The answer is no. They were vulnerable, but they’re allowed to make the consensual choice. Once the migrants are released by the federal government into the country, they have the right to go anywhere they want, and therefore, groups like public interest groups or states can assist them with their consent,” Turley added.
Since the Sept. 14 revelation of DeSantis’s plane transport, numerous Democrats, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, have called for the Justice Department to investigate the incident.
Additionally, a Democratic sheriff in Texas’s Bexar County, Javier Salazar, said Monday that an investigation is underway to determine if any immigrants are victims of any crime.
But numerous experts have said it would be a difficult track toward prosecuting DeSantis, even if there are disagreements among legal experts on if he violated federal law.
What could be more likely, according to Elizabeth Ricci, a Florida-based immigration law attorney, is that transporting the roughly 50 immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard could create a case that they qualify for a U visa, which is provided to victims of a specific slate of crimes and who have suffered mental or physical abuse.
Both Ricci and Self claim that “fraud in foreign labor contracting” is one of the qualifying factors on a U visa form, and they cite DeSantis’s Friday comments at a Daytona Beach press conference, where he claimed the immigrants would have “a better life” and “jobs” once they arrived at the Massachusetts island.
Still, the immigrants were never on Martha’s Vineyard for long enough to begin a job application form, as they were relocated to Joint Base Cape Cod after a short 36-hour stay.
Biden himself vehemently opposes the efforts by Republican governors to transfer immigrants. But amid the apparent tumult caused by leaders such as Abbott and DeSantis, the U.S. border has seen a total of 2.1 million immigrant encounters this year, up from last year’s previous record of 1.7 million encounters under the Biden administration, CBP data show.
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“We have a process in place to manage migrants at the border,” Biden said at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute gala that ushered in Hispanic Heritage Month.
Republican officials “should not interfere with that process by waging these political stunts,” Biden added.
