Florida - Thursday September 15, 2022: Governor Ron DeSantis is defending his decision to use state funds to fly about 50 undocumented migrants from Texas to the exclusive Massachusetts resort island of Martha’s Vineyard. His gubernatorial rival, democrat Charlie Crist, condemned the move.
Two planes carrying nearly 50 mostly Venezuelan migrants arrived on Martha’s Vineyard early Thursday morning from Texas after making stops in Florida and South Carolina.
Later in the day at a news conference in Niceville Governor DeSantis acknowledged that the state paid for the flight under a $12-million program approved by the legislature authorizing private companies to move migrants out of Florida. NPR reports that all of the migrants are from Texas, and none were from Florida.
“We are not a sanctuary state and its better to be able to go to a sanctuary jurisdiction and yes we will help facilitate that transport for you to be able to go to greener pastures.”
Democrat Charlie Crist who is running against DeSantis for Governor called the move disgusting and vile. “It’s amazing to me what he’s willing to do for shear political gain. And to use people in this horrific way, all so he can rile up his far-right base and use people as punching bags while he tries to run for president.”
DeSantis said his action is no different than what the federal Government has been doing with migrants awaiting the outcome of their legal status.
“Biden would fly people in the middle of the night, dump them all across this country, there was no warning on any of this. The minute of what those border towns deal with every day is brought to their front door they all of a sudden go berserk. And it just shows you their virtue signaling is a fraud.”
"How do you gather up people with lies that they have a promise of jobs in Boston, and ship ‘em off to some place and when they landed, they didn’t even know where they were.”