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Texas sheriff opens investigation into transport of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, DeSantis responds

by mcardinal

Willie R. Tubbs, FISM News

 

The sheriff of Bexar County, Texas, says he has not been contacted by the Biden administration but would welcome White House communication as he investigates the events that led 50 migrants from South Texas to Martha’s Vineyard by way of Florida. 

Sheriff Javier Salazar, a Democrat, confirmed in a tweet  and during a Facebook live information session that his department was working on a case involving “migrants that were lured from the Migrant Resource Center, located in Bexar County … and flown to Florida, where they were ultimately left to fend for themselves in Martha’s Vineyard, MA.”

 

Salazar said he had not spoken with the White House about the investigation, an announcement he no doubt hoped would quell accusations he is prosecuting political rivals of President Joe Biden. However, the sheriff also said he welcomed federal involvement, a statement almost certain to invite those same criticisms.

“This case would absolutely have to go federal, and I would welcome a call from the White House to discuss,” Salazar said. 

Salazar alleges that someone paid a migrant to recruit the 50 people who eventually wound up in Massachusetts. 

“What we understand is a Venezuelan migrant was paid a bird-dog fee to recruit 50 migrants who were then were lured — and I will use the word ‘lured’ under false pretenses — to staying in a hotel for a few days, then taken to an airplane where they were flown to Florida and then Martha’s Vineyard under false pretenses of being offered jobs,” Salazar said. “For what we can gather, a little more than a photo op, a video op, and then they were left there.”

While it’s true the migrants disembarked from a plane in Martha’s Vineyard having arrived unannounced and with no guarantee of a warm welcome or provision – which satisfies the definition of having been “left” – the situation in which they found themselves was not as desperate as the sheriff’s descriptions made it seem. 

The residents of Martha’s Vineyard, among the wealthiest and safest places in the United States and indeed the world, housed the migrants for 44 hours. During that time, if the reporting of CNN is to be believed, the unexpected visitors were given food, clothing, phones, and legal advice. The migrants were eventually sent to a nearby military installation for longer-term housing. 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican and the clear target of the investigation has openly claimed responsibility for having funded the relocation, and scoffed at accusations of wrongdoing.  He added that, if the migrants were abandoned anywhere, it was in Bexar County. 

“Florida gave them an opportunity to seek greener pastures in a sanctuary jurisdiction that offered greater resources for them, as we expected,” DeSantis said in a statement. “Unless the MA national guard has abandoned these individuals, they have been provided accommodations, sustenance, clothing, and more options to succeed following their unfair enticement into the United States, unlike the 53 migrants who died in a truck found abandoned in Bexar County this June.”

FISM reported extensively on the tragic event to which DeSantis referred in his statement. 

Salazar, though, was firm that wrongdoing had occurred. 

“What infuriates me the most is what we have is 48 people here legally — they have every right to be here and they were preyed upon,” Salazar said. “Lured with promises of a better life and with the knowledge they would cling [to] anything that was offered for a better life and were exploited and hoodwinked to make the trip to Florida for what I believe was political posturing.”

Florida officials have said that those flown to Martha’s Vineyard received a humanitarian upgrade, as Texas is unable to effectively deal with the massive influx of migrants at the border.

“The majority if not all of the individuals that originated in Texas and ended up on the flight to Martha’s Vineyard were indeed homeless, hungry, sleeping outside in parking lots,” the officials said, according to a Fox News report. “Many have been in a shelter at some point previously and had been kicked out, did not have a place to go, and essentially we’re wandering homeless along the border.”

Salazar did not offer many specifics as to what crimes might have occurred, and in fact, said he was unable to point to any laws that were broken.

“At this point, I’m not able to definitively say here’s the statute that they broke either federal, state or local,” Salazar stated. “But what I can tell you is it’s wrong just from a human rights perspective, what was done to these folks is wrong.”

Numerous Democrats have accused DeSantis of engaging in human trafficking, one New York Times columnist labeled him as worse than former President Donald Trump, and at least one professor says DeSantis has engaged in a “mini-ethnic cleansing.” 

“As soon as you start treating human beings as undesirable problems to dump on others, you are in very dangerous territory,” David Livingstone Smith, a professor of philosophy at the University of New England, said in an interview with The Guardian. 

DeSantis’ office, however, said that the migrants were clearly told where they were going, signing off on a waiver, and were also given a pamphlet that provided information on Martha’s Vinyard and Massachusett state resources for immigrants.

Earlier this year the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration named the U.S.-Mexico border the deadliest migration land route in the world. Since October of 2021, 782 migrants have died along the border. 

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