WASHINGTON – Florida Governor Ron DeSantis took credit on Thursday for sending two planeloads of undocumented Venezuelans from Texas to wealthy Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, as Republicans play up immigration issues before November midterm elections.
Around 50 of the migrants, including children, landed on Wednesday on the island, where Democratic presidents from John F. Kennedy to Bill Clinton have summered, and former president Barack Obama owns an estate.
“Immigrants are being dropped off on Martha’s Vineyard by chartered flights from Texas. Many don’t know where they are. They say they were told they would be given housing and jobs,” said Mr Dylan Fernandes, a local state legislator.
Half-a-day later two buses, also from Texas, deposited dozens of migrants in front of the Washington residence of Vice-President Kamala Harris, part of a five-month-old operation by Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott to pressure Democrats on the immigration issue.
“We are not a sanctuary state. . . We will help facilitate that transport for you to be able to go to greener pastures,” Mr DeSantis said at an official event in Florida on Thursday.
“In Florida, we take what is happening at the southern border seriously,” he said.
President Joe Biden slammed the moves as Republicans “playing politics with human beings”.
“What they’re doing is simply wrong,” said Mr Biden at a Congressional Hispanic Caucus event on Thursday evening. “It’s un-American. It’s reckless.”
The moves came as Mr DeSantis and Mr Abbott, two of the country’s most prominent and combative Republican governors, have sought to highlight the issue of tens of thousands of migrants trying to cross the southern border into the United States each month.
Mr Abbott, whose state is the first destination for most of the migrants crossing from Mexico, has since April sent about 10,000 of them northward, mainly to Washington, Chicago and New York. These cities have declared themselves “sanctuaries” for migrants – meaning they will not be arrested solely for not having legal immigrant status.
Yet most of those being transported have been permitted to stay in the country by border officials after officially requesting asylum until their cases are reviewed.
The Texas governor, who is seeking re-election in November, said on Thursday that Vice-President Harris claims the border is secure and denies the existence of an immigration crisis.
“We’re sending migrants to her backyard to call on the Biden administration to do its job and secure the border,” he wrote on Twitter.
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