TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Ron DeSantis sent two planes full of migrants to the Massachusetts moneyed enclave of Martha’s Vineyard on Wednesday, part of his continued badgering of President Biden and Democrats over illegal immigration.
A spokeswoman late Wednesday confirmed the move, part of a $12 million program the state authorized to remove undocumented immigrants.
“States like Massachusetts, New York and California will better facilitate the care of these individuals who they have invited into our country by incentivizing illegal immigration through their designation as ‘sanctuary states’ and support for the Biden administration’s open border policies,” said Taryn Fenske, DeSantis’ communications director.
While DeSantis ordered the transportation of the foreign nationals, initial reports from the island were less clear about the reasons for them being sent to Massachusetts and where they came from.
The island’s newspaper, The Vineyard Gazette reported that a single plane carrying about 48 migrants from Venezuela and Colombia landed unexpectedly at Martha’s Vineyard Airport Wednesday afternoon.
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The Cape Cod Times reported that the migrants had been put on a plane with nothing more than a brochure from the island’s community services center — about two miles from the airport.
The arrivals then walked from the airport to the center, officials said.
State Rep. Dylan Fernandes, a Democrat from nearby Falmouth, tweeted that the migrants were dropped off on Martha’s Vineyard by chartered flights from Texas.
“Many don’t know where they are,” he said. “They say they were told they would be given housing and jobs.”
“Islanders were given no notice but are coming together as a community to support them,” he said.
DeSantis, who attended a $50,000-a-seat dinner fundraiser on nearby Nantucket last month, has railed about President Biden’s southern border policies, blaming it for an increase in the illegal drug fentanyl in the state, along with crime and other woes.
He recently talked of sending migrants from Florida to Biden’s home state of Delaware. And he has mentioned Martha’s Vineyard as a target for migrants that had come to Florida.
‘Shell-shocked and afraid’
On the island, the influx caused some level of chaos, which was obviously sought by the Florida governor.
With none of the migrants speaking English, Spanish translators from the local high school were called to help social service workers communicate with them. Water and snacks were provided in a parking lot.
“We COVID-tested them all. Everyone was negative. A little girl had a temperature, so we separated her with her family,” Janet Constantino, a therapist and nurse practitioner, told the Cape Cod Times.
“A lot of them were shell-shocked and afraid,” she said.
The migrants were going to be housed overnight Wednesday at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Edgartown, the newspaper reported.
County officials also announced that they opened emergency shelters across the island and were asking for volunteers to help with what they called “an unexpected, ongoing, urgent humanitarian situation.”
DeSantis, who is running for re-election in November against Democrat Charlie Crist and is seen as a likely Republican presidential contender in 2024, has blamed the Biden administration for ending the federal “remain in Mexico” policy that had begun under his one-time political mentor, former President Donald Trump.
The Crist campaign slammed DeSantis for shipping the migrants to Martha’s Vineyard.
“Everything Ron DeSantis does is to score political points with his hard right base in a thinly veiled attempt to run for President — but it’s Floridians who pay the price,” he said in a campaign statement. “Florida is spending $12 million to fly innocent migrant children out of our state when that money could be spent on fighting to help Floridians and lower costs.”
U.S. Rep. William Keating, a Democrat whose district includes Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, said he was “disgusted by Governor DeSantis’s decision to prioritize cruelty and chaos over human dignity in today’s taxpayer-funded stunt.”
“History does not look kindly on leaders who treat human beings like cargo, loading them up and sending them a thousand miles away without telling them their destination,” he said in a statement. “Still, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis made that choice today. Instead of working to find assistance for a group of refugees, he chose to turn them into political pawns.”
“The people of Martha’s Vineyard, its vibrant immigrant community, and the Commonwealth as a whole are already calling Governor DeSantis’s bluff and rising to meet the challenge because that’s what Americans do — we help those in need,” he said.
Outraged Venezuelans in Florida
Late Wednesday, Venezuelan-American leaders in Florida denounced the “flights of asylum seekers” to Martha’s Vineyard, blasting DeSantis.
“Venezuelan leaders are rightfully outraged,” five Venezuelan-American groups said in a joint statement. They planned a news conference for Thursday morning in South Florida. Karla Hernández, Crist’s running mate, will join them.
The group called the governor’s move a “blatant disregard for human life,” and accused him of lying to Cuban and Venezuelan communities earlier this month, when they said he pledged not to sent migrants from either country out of state.
DeSantis went to the Texas-Mexico border last year to talk tough on border policy with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. DeSantis also dispatched more than 250 state law enforcement officers with the stated mission of helping Texas stem the influx of migrants and drugs.
The Florida taxpayer-financed force stayed for several weeks and reported more than 9,000 contacts with migrants at the border.
John Kennedy is a reporter in the USA TODAY Network’s Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at jkennedy2@gannett.com, or on Twitter at @JKennedyReport