The Mexican Government is the latest jurisdiction to challenge Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis for his administration’s decision to relocate immigrants who are in this country without documentation. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has declared it as “immoral”. The Mexican government is not alone in its criticism, some of the other US states are doing the same, with some also questioning the cost of the practice and who is paying for it.
Last week, Texas sent a bus load to Los Angeles, but that’s just a tiny fraction of those transported so far.
According to the Migration Policy Institute, “13,000 migrants had been bused from Arizona and Texas to Washington, D.C., New York and Chicago” as of September last year.
But Florida, under the direction of DeSantis, a GOP presidential contender, has ramped up the movement of migrants by contracting with companies to fly 36 of them to Sacramento on June 2 and 5, and 49 of them to Martha’s Vineyard last September.
Rachel Self, an attorney representing the migrants taken to Massachusetts, said, “This is very un-American”.
Self says the migrants are being well cared for by charitable groups, but they’re working only odd jobs, confused about their legal futures, and scared to think they may never see family and friends again.
“You have government officials going outside of their jurisdiction into other jurisdictions, hunting people, putting them onto transports and moving them to other places, and that should concern everybody,” Self said.
Further questions arise about the cost of this practice. Relocating those without documents is not cheap.
As the Migration Policy Institute points out, “the buses and flights come at a high cost to state taxpayers.” The Florida cost for the Massachusetts flights is “$12,800 per migrant.”
But now there could be a legal cost that would be passed on to state taxpayers with the sheriff of San Antonio, Texas, recommending criminal charges of “unlawful restraint” for the Martha’s Vineyard flights.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta is considering criminal charges for the two Sacramento flights.
This week, Bonta branded the flights “immoral migrant transports” and made an official request for records from DeSantis.
Sacramento migrants interviewed by church volunteers say representatives with a company called Vertol Systems told them they would help them find jobs, but the California attorney general said that never happened.
