There once were two governors from Nantucket… Because election campaign stunts. With a rail strike averted, the GOP can now use boxcars just like their fascist forebears used in WWII.
Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott have decided to take human trafficking to new heights, ‘transporting’ their problems no differently than England sending prisoners to Australia or something, something... Godwin’s Law.
As the migrants received Covid-19 tests, food and clothing, there was confusion on the ground about who had sent them to Martha’s Vineyard, a popular getaway for the moneyed and powerful. Migrants said they had started the day in San Antonio, but it was the Florida governor’s office that took responsibility.
Taryn M. Fenske, the communications director for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, said the two flights were part of a state program to transport undocumented immigrants to so-called sanctuary destinations. This year the Florida Legislature set aside $12 million for the transportation program.
“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,” Ms. Fenske said in a statement.
One of the migrants, who asked to be identified only as Leonel, said in Spanish that the people of Martha’s Vineyard were generous and that he “had never seen anything like it.” They gave him a pair of shoes.
“I haven’t slept well in three months,” said Leonel, who does not have any relatives or friends in the United States. “It’s been three months since I put on a new pair of pants. Or shoes.”
Leonel, 45, said he had left Venezuela about three months ago, crossing the roadless Darién Gap between Colombia and Panama and making his way north through Central America and Mexico. His first attempt at crossing the U.S. border failed. During his second attempt, at Piedras Negras, Mexico, he made it across the Rio Grande.
Leonel spent several days in immigration detention before being released in San Antonio, where he and other migrants were eventually told they could get passage to Massachusetts. They agreed.
Terry MacCormack, the press secretary for Gov. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, said in a statement that his administration was in communication with local island officials, who were providing “short-term shelter services” to the migrants.
The migrants appear to mostly be from Venezuela, State Representative Dylan Fernandes said. They received basic relief services at Martha’s Vineyard Community Services in Oak Bluffs before being taken across the street to the regional high school and eventually to St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Edgartown, a former whaling town that is the most manicured on the island.
www.nytimes.com/...?